IRAQ IS A DISASTER

[Stereotype V.001]

Good to see we have another expert. That really makes sense that Iraqis are the only people carrying out the insurgency. Just like the afghanistan holywar V.002 was all Afghanis. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they are part of teh uber right wing conspiracy!!!(not to mention how low tech shape charged IEDs are, and how inexpensive it is to have 100,000 plus hidden in your local mosque) Good stuff.

You guys just sold me on the draft. Thanks.

[SF1]

Stereotype, are you one of those Republican propoganda douches that gets paid to come on here and other sites and spew your garbage? Or are you just a douche in general?

Try reading the other posts.

[s.urkaleeno]

thought I would put a little prespective to this discussion, have a look at what the price of political capitol is http://www.awitness.org/journal/real_iraq_war.html

[villain]

I just picked up this album again after 13 years and it's as true now as ever...
check this song out:

Naked Aggression

Right Now
So much war, so much
destruction
Lives are wasted for production
so much anger, so much
hate
If things don't change, the
human race will end
Will the 90's be another
decade of apathy?
Are we going to sit by and
watch things get worse?
NO!
The rich will stop at nothing
to control the world and keep
their power
They all live like royalty at
the expense of you and me
Right now (Chorus)
In this new world order
Right Now
No one is free
Right now
Corporations own this world
Right now
We are victims of their greed
Buying off the government
Destroying the environment
Making sure there's not
enough so they can keep their
prices up
There's food rotting in
warehouses while people
starve to death
Big business won't give it to
these people to save there live
because they won't make a
profit AHHHHH!!
Every country must obey
What these corporations say
If they choose not to comply
Troops will be sent there
and they will die!
Right now (Chorus)
Are you prepared? Do you
have what it takes? to
overlook your selfishness and
create a better place?
First we must destroy the
system!
Right now (Chorus)
If things don't change the
human race will end!

[dumy]

^^word..

[hobo knife]

These same stories are written almost everyday, but this one struck me as just really poor journalism...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military said Monday that coalition forces launched airstrikes Sunday in and around Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killing "an estimated 70 terrorists."

But an Iraqi doctor who reported 20 people killed -- including six children -- and 25 wounded said all those were civilians.

An Iraqi Ministry of Health official also said one child was killed and two women wounded in the airstrikes.

Military officials said they had no reports of civilians killed.

"We do careful targeting to ensure minimum civilian casualties in the areas that the insurgents are operating," said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, director of the U.S.-led Combined Press Information Center.

In one operation Sunday, a precision-guided bomb killed up to 20 insurgents east of Ramadi after military personnel observed them planting a bomb at the site of Saturday's blast that killed five U.S. and two Iraqi soldiers, a U.S. military statement said.

"[They] were not terrorists -- they were only a bunch of civilians whose curiosity prompted them to gather around a destroyed Humvee," said Dr. Dhiya Fahdawi, who treated people at a hospital in Ramadi.

In the Abu Faraj region, north of Ramadi, about 50 insurgents were killed in operations surrounding a suspected insurgent safe house, the military said.

U.S. air patrols were observing a gathering at the suspected safe house when insurgents fired small arms at a U.S. helicopter team, a 2nd Marine Division statement said.

The copter team returned fire, killing at least 10 insurgents.

Later, a team of F/A-18s observed suspected insurgents loading vehicles with weapons and launched a precision-guided bomb, killing as many as 40 insurgents.

Up to three insurgents also were killed in a clash with coalition forces at the government center in Ramadi, the military statement said.

GOD, fucking CNN is so fucking liberal! ....I can't believe they are still using the word "coalition"...damn what a liberal news organization....and when the coalition military says they killed "as many as 40 suspected insurgents" and "about 50 insurgents were killed surrounding a suspected insurgent safe house" .....CNN has the audacity to print a quote from a doctor who treated non-insurgents injured in the attack. Who's side is CNN on? Fuck! They might as well start wearing pink. That's why I stick to fox news, because the report and I decide, and they are fair and balanced. FUcK LiBeRAl PuSSIes. fucking commies.

[KING BLING]

http://workingforchange.speedera.net/www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/wfc/TMW11-12-03.gif

I felt like this was appropriate for anyone under 30 who thinks this war just but isn't in it...

[!@#$%]

Today's Insurgents in Iraq are Tomorrow's Terrorists

By Peter Bergen
Schwartz Fellow
and Alec Reynolds
Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies

Foreign Affairs
November 1, 2005


When the United States started sending guns and money to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, it had a clearly defined Cold War purpose: helping expel the Soviet army, which had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. And so it made sense that once the Afghan jihad forced a Soviet withdrawal a decade later, Washington would lose interest in the rebels. For the international mujahideen drawn to the Afghan conflict, however, the fight was just beginning. They opened new fronts in the name of global jihad and became the spearhead of Islamist terrorism. The seriousness of the blowback became clear to the United States with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center: all of the attack's participants either had served in Afghanistan or were linked to a Brooklyn-based fund-raising organ for the Afghan jihad that was later revealed to be al Qaeda's de facto U.S. headquarters. The blowback, evident in other countries as well, continued to increase in intensity throughout the rest of the decade, culminating on September 11, 2001.

The current war in Iraq will generate a ferocious blowback of its own, which--as a recent classified CIA assessment predicts--could be longer and more powerful than that from Afghanistan. Foreign volunteers fighting U.S. troops in Iraq today will find new targets around the world after the war ends. Yet the Bush administration, consumed with managing countless crises in Iraq, has devoted little time to preparing for such long-term consequences. Lieutenant General James Conway, the director of operations on the Joint Staff, admitted as much when he said in June that blowback "is a concern, but there's not much we can do about it at this point in time." Judging from the experience of Afghanistan, such thinking is both mistaken and dangerously complacent.

..........................


IN BAGHDAD AND IN BOSTON

President George W. Bush and others have suggested that it is better for the United States to fight the terrorists in Baghdad than in Boston. It is a comforting notion, but it is wrong on two counts. First, it posits a finite number of terrorists who can be lured to one place and killed. But the Iraq war has expanded the terrorists' ranks: the year 2003 saw the highest incidence of significant terrorist attacks in two decades, and then, in 2004, astonishingly, that number tripled. (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously complained in October 2003 that "we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror." An exponentially rising number of terrorist attacks is one metric that seems relevant.) Second, the Bush administration has not addressed the question of what the foreign fighters will do when the war in Iraq ends. It would be naive to expect them to return to civilian life in their home countries. More likely, they will become the new shock troops of the international jihadist movement.

For these reasons, U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East, as well as the United States itself, are vulnerable to blowback. Disturbingly, some European governments are already seeing some of their citizens and resident aliens answer the call to fight in Iraq. In February, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. troops in Iraq had detained three French militants--and that police in Paris had arrested ten associates who were planning to join them. In June, authorities in Spain arrested 16 men, mostly Moroccans, on charges of recruiting suicide bombers for Iraq. In September, prosecutors in the United States indicted a Dutch resident, Iraqi-born Wesam al-Delaema, for conspiring to bomb U.S. convoys in Fallujah. These incidents presage danger not only for European countries, but also for the United States, since European nationals benefit from the Visa Waiver Program, which affords them relatively easy access to the United States.

But it is Saudi Arabia that will bear the brunt of the blowback. Several studies attest to the significant role Saudi nationals have played in the conflict. Of the 154 Arab fighters killed in Iraq between September 2004 and March 2005, 61 percent were from Saudi Arabia. Another report concluded that of the 235 suicide bombers named on Web sites since mid-2004 as having perpetrated attacks in Iraq, more than 50 percent were Saudi nationals. Today, the Saudi government is exporting its jihadist problem instead of dealing with it, just as the Egyptians did during the Afghan war.



this is an amazing article
for those of you who actually read..
this is the whole of it..

http://www.newamerica.net/templets/Documen...ID=2648&Prt=Yes (http://www.newamerica.net/templets/Documents/print.cfm?pg=article&DocID=2648&Prt=Yes)

[casekonly]

Weekly National Security Index



Iraq









Approximate number of U.S. troops currently in Iraq:


152,000

Percent of coalition forces contributed by the U.S.


87.4

Weeks since the Pentagon developed a plan to draw down U.S. forces in Iraq to roughly 40,000 by mid-2005:


104

Approximate amount appropriated by Congress for Iraq operations so far:


$218 billion

Approximate amount spent by the U.S. in World War I:


$205 billion

Approximate amount spent in Iraq by the U.S. last week:


$1.5 billion

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) found:


0

Number of U.S. service members killed in Iraq:


1,962

Number killed since the President announced the end of major combat:


1,823

Number reported wounded by the Defense Department:


15,063

Approximate number of medical evacuations of U.S. military personnel performed since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom:


55,000

Number of National Guard soldiers killed in Iraq through August 27, 2005:


300

Number of National Guard soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam War:


97

Number of Iraqi military and police killed since training began (June 2003):


3,339

Estimated number of insurgents in Iraq (November 2003):


5,000

Estimated number of insurgents in Iraq (June 2005):


15 - 20,000

Estimated number of 86 Iraqi military battalions that are capable of operating independently:


1

Total amount of taxpayers' money spent by Halliburton that the Defense Contract Audit Agency has deemed either excessive or insufficiently documented:


$1.47 billion

Total number of nations contributing troops to Iraq as part of President Bush's "coalition of the willing" at some point during the war:


37

Number of these nations that either have withdrawn or plan to withdraw their troops from the coalition:


14

Average size of troop contributions by nations with troops currently deployed to Iraq, excluding the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, and Italy:


186

Amount of the $13.6 billion pledged by the international community for Iraq's reconstruction that has been dispersed:


$2.9 billion

Rank of September 2005 among months with the highest number of multiple-fatality bombings:


1






War on Terrorism









Days since September 11, 2001 that Osama bin Laden has remained uncaptured:


1,495

Days after bombing Pearl Harbor that Japan surrendered to U.S. forces:


1,365

Number of times President Bush mentioned the "war on terror" in one month before the 2004 elections:


71

Number of times in the six months following the 2004 elections:


66

Chances of a WMD attack in the next ten years, according to leading arms experts:


70 percent

Number of discovered cases of potential illicit smuggling of nuclear or radiological material out of the former Soviet Union last year:


200

Percent of former Soviet nuclear material stockpiles secured under Nunn-Lugar counterproliferation programs:


26

Number of terrorist suspects the Bush Administration claims have been convicted since September 11, 2001:


200

Number that have actually been convicted:


39

Total hours of wiretap recordings related to counterterrorism that the FBI has failed to review:


8,000

Average time the FBI requires to hire contract linguists to review the tapes:


16 months






U.S. Military Personnel




- Readiness/Strain




Total National Guard and Reserve personnel currently deployed:


144,121

Percentage of the Army's Third Infantry Division currently serving a second tour in Iraq:


50

Number of Marine battalions that are currently serving or preparing to serve their third combat tour in Iraq:


5

Of the 333 Army National Guard infantry, military police, armor, and Special Forces units, the number currently combat-ready without reinforcements:


6

Percent of Army Reserve currently ineligible for deployment because of recent deployments, lack of training, medical reasons, etc.:


84

Value of total Reserve Component equipment shortage, beginning Fiscal Year 2005:


$15.21 billion

Army National Guard equipment shortage, as a percentage of the total:


76.7

Shortage of Captains, who serve as unit-level leaders, in the Army Reserve:


52 percent

- Recruiting and Retention




Number of recruits by which the Army missed its Fiscal Year 2005 recruiting goal:


6,627

Number of the six Reserve Components that fell short of their Fiscal Year 2005 recruiting goals:


4

Total number of recruits by which the six Reserve Components fell short of their cumulative Fiscal Year 2005 recruiting goal:


18,864

Year in which the Army last experienced a recruiting shortfall as large as the Fiscal Year 2005 shortfall:


1979

Number of months the Marine Corps missed its recruiting goals between January and April 2005:


4

Number of months the Marine Corps missed its recruiting goals in ten years before January 2005:


0

Prior to 2004, years since the Army National Guard last missed its annual recruiting goal:


11

Consecutive months the Army National Guard has missed its monthly recruiting goals:


11

Rate of loss of Army captains and lieutenants, the Army's junior officers, in 2004:


8.5

Average rate of loss of Army captains and lieutenants, 1996-2004:


7.3

Resignation requests submitted by Army Reserve Officers in 2001:


15

Resignation requests submitted by Army Reserve Officers, September 2003-September 2004:


370

Percent of Army enlisted special operations personnel leaving the force in 2004:


13

Percent of Army enlisted special operations personnel leaving in 2003:


6

- Morale




Percent of troops in Iraq reporting that their unit's morale is "low" or "very low":


54

Increase in the divorce rate among Army officers since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom:


317 percent

Approximate number of veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder:


24,000






North Korea









Estimated minimum number of nuclear weapons likely produced by North Korea during the Bush Administration:


4-6

Estimated number produced by North Korea from 1953 to 2000:


1-2

Potential number of nuclear weapons North Korea could possess by next year if Six-Party Talks continue to produce no lasting disarmament agreement:


11






Darfur









Estimated number of conflict-related deaths per day in Darfur, Sudan:


500

Estimated number since President Bush took office:


400,000

Days since Secretary of State Powell first called the situation "genocide":


389

Number of days after the Senate passed the Darfur Accountability Act as an amendment to H.R. 1268 that the Administration wrote a letter pressuring House Republicans (successfully) to remove it from the final bill:




1

Number of Darfuris expected to require food assistance during the August-October "hunger season":


3.5 million

Conflict-affected persons in Darfur and Eastern Chad:


3.4 million

Number of Darfuris displaced by the conflict (internally displaced persons and refugees):


2 million

Total population of the Darfur region:


6 million






Homeland Security









Of 14 recommendations by the 9/11 Commission related to homeland security and emergency preparedness/response, number for which 9/11 Commissioners have judged progress on implementation to be "minimal" or "unsatisfactory":




11

Factor by which passengers on mass transit systems exceed passengers on airlines:


16

Funding per passenger the Bush Administration has spent to secure mass transit systems since September 11, 2001:


$0.01

Cost of security upgrades needed to protect rail and transit systems as estimated by U.S. transit authorities:


$6 billion

Amount of funding designated specifically for rail and transit security in President Bush's budget:


$0

Total amount of funding added to the Fiscal Year 2006 Homeland Security Appropriations bill for rail security in the wake of the July 7 London Bombings:


$0

Number of provisions in federal law requiring chemical facilities to establish safeguards against a terrorist attack:


0

Number of chemical facilities at which a terrorist strike could threaten the lives of over 1 million people:


123

Percent of cargo arriving at U.S. ports inspected for WMD:


<1

Percent of "high-risk" cargo inspected:


17.5

Estimated economic impact of a terrorist attack to a U.S. port:


$1 trillion

Percent of Transportation Security Administration Fiscal Year 2005 budget allocated for port security grants:


2.8

Deadline for meeting port security standards set by the Maritime Transportation Security Act:


2004

Year in which MTSA port security standards will be met if port security funding levels remain constant:


2050

Ratio of federal air security screeners to federal surface transportation (rail and public transit) security screeners:


450:1

Homeland security grant dollars per capita awarded to the U.S. Virgin Islands in Fiscal Year 2004:


$104.35

Homeland security grant dollars per capita awarded to California in Fiscal Year 2004:


$4.97






Veterans









Approximate number of Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom veterans discharged from service, through June 2005:


393,000

Approximate number of these veterans seeking health care from VA hospitals, through June 2005:


103,000

Approximate number of these veterans diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or other mental ailments:


24,000

According to the Army Surgeon General, percent of troops returning from the Iraq war that have developed stress-related mental health problems:


30

Total funding requested specifically to meet the needs of Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom veterans in the President's 2006 budget:


$0

Total Compensation and Pension Claims Backlog:


509,212

Percent change in pending claims from the end of Fiscal Year 2003 to March 2005:


+33

Gap between veterans' needs and President Bush's 2006 budget proposal:


$3.5 billion

Percent increase needed each year just to maintain existing programs in the face of medical inflation and other rising costs:


13-14

Percent increase in veterans health care funding requested in President Bush's 2006 Budget Proposal:


0.4

Fiscal Year 2005 budget shortfall announced by the VA:


$1.27 billion

Number of weeks prior to the VA's budget shortfall announcement that VA Secretary Nicholson told Congress, "I can assure you that VA does not need emergency supplemental funds in FY 2005":




11

Total funding shortfall for Fiscal Years 2005 and 2006 now identified by the Bush Administration:


$3 billion

Percentage rise in the number of veterans collecting unemployment insurance since August 2002:


96

Approximate number of veterans who experience homelessness during a given year:


500,000






Democracy and Development









Number of Botswanan AIDS patients the Bush Administration claims are receiving treatment because of U.S. assistance:


32,839

Number of Botswanan AIDS patients the Botswanan government says are receiving treatment because of U.S. assistance:


0

Total amount appropriated to the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) so far:


$2.48 billion

Total aid distributed by the MCA so far:


$0

Average amount per year to be distributed through the five compact agreements signed so far:


$37.7 million

Annual amount President Bush promised for the MCA:


$5 billion

Average amount requested in President Bush's annual budgets since he proposed the MCA:


$2.3 billion

Number of the world's ten poorest nations with whom the United States has signed an MCA compact:


0

Number of the world's 40 poorest nations with whom the United States has signed an MCA compact:


1

Rank of U.S. among 21 developed nations in foreign assistance spending measured as a percentage of Gross National Product:


20

Number of children dying each day from preventable diseases:


27,000

Percentage of the world's population living on less than $2 per day:


50

Cut in funding for foreign development assistance proposed in President Bush's budget:


$345 million






Statistics of the Week









Iraq: The Constitutional Referendum and the Way Forward




Estimated voter turnout for the October 15 constitutional referendum in Iraq:


63-64%

Estimated percentage of Sunnis who voted against ratifying the constitution in Sunni-dominated areas such as al Anbar province:


85-95%

Number of the constitution's 130 clauses that remained incomplete prior to the referendum:


50

Average weekly insurgent attacks during the period prior to the referendum (August-October 2005):


570

Average weekly insurgent attacks during the period prior to the previous election (November 2004-January 2005):


515

Total number of trained Iraqi Security Force (ISF) personnel that Bush Administration planners believe will be needed by 2007 to assume responsibility for securing the nation:




325,000

Total number of ISF personnel the Administration currently reports as trained:


199,400

Number of 88 Iraqi Army battalions currently able to conduct operations independent of U.S. forces:


1

[Dawood]

thats a serious post casek

[John Birch]

Homeland security grant dollars per capita awarded to the U.S. Virgin Islands in Fiscal Year 2004:


$104.35

Homeland security grant dollars per capita awarded to California in Fiscal Year 2004:


$4.97



^^^^^^
I find this misleading, though I understand your point...areas with smaller populations are gonna have a higher per capita ratio no matter what. That doesn't make them less vulnerable though. But I understand the whole argument against giving bomb disposal trucks and night vision googles to sheriffs deputies in rural Wyoming at the expense of funding a port in san diego.


But on the bigger picture, I think Republicans realized after appropriating this masive, and much needed, funding and creating a new bureacracy, most of the funding was gonna go to liberal, Democratic areas, most of whom didn't vote for them.. for republicans that a big no-no, irregardless of what they preach...

[casekonly]

those are statistics from our govt.

http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc.cfm?A=fs&B=109&C=1&D=109

[casekonly]

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/libact103198.pdf

[I.C.Shadow]

^^

1998.... Fuck our government. Im freal bout to pull some Fight Club type shit in the near future. End of my rope.

[kitchen roll]

How low can Army recruiters go?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Jan. 9, 2006, at 5:06 PM ET



Three months ago, I wrote that the war in Iraq was wrecking the U.S. Army, and since then the evidence has only mounted, steeply. Faced with repeated failures to meet its recruitment targets, the Army has had to lower its standards dramatically. First it relaxed restrictions against high-school drop-outs. Then it started letting in more applicants who score in the lowest third on the armed forces aptitude test—a group, known as Category IV recruits, who have been kept to exceedingly small numbers, as a matter of firm policy, for the past 20 years. (There is also a Category V—those who score in the lowest 10th percentile. They have always been ineligible for service in the armed forces and, presumably, always will be.)

The bad news is twofold. First, the number of Category IV recruits is starting to skyrocket. Second, a new study compellingly demonstrates that, in all realms of military activity, intelligence does matter. Smarter soldiers and units perform their tasks better; dumber ones do theirs worse.

Until just last year, the Army had no trouble attracting recruits and therefore no need to dip into the dregs. As late as 2004, fully 92 percent of new Army recruits had graduated high school and just 0.6 percent scored Category IV on the military aptitude test.


Then came the spiraling casualties in Iraq, the diminishing popularity of the war itself, and the subsequent crisis in recruitment.

In response to the tightening trends, on Sept. 20, 2005, the Defense Department released DoD Instruction 1145.01, which allows 4 percent of each year's recruits to be Category IV applicants—up from the 2 percent limit that had been in place since the mid-1980s. Even so, in October, the Army had such a hard time filling its slots that the floodgates had to be opened; 12 percent of that month's active-duty recruits were Category IV. November was another disastrous month; Army officials won't even say how many Cat IV applicants they took in, except to acknowledge that the percentage was in "double digits."

(These officials insist that they will stay within the 4 percent limit for the entire fiscal year, which runs from October 2005 through September 2006. But given the extremely high percentage of Cat IVs recruited in the fiscal year's first two months, this pledge may be impossible to keep. For the math on this point, click here.)

Some may wonder: So what? Can't someone who scores low on an aptitude test, even very low, go on to become a fine, competent soldier, especially after going through boot camp and training? No question. Some college drop-outs also end up doing very well in business and other professions. But in general, in the military no less than in the civilian world, the norm turns out to be otherwise.

In a RAND Corp. report commissioned by the office of the secretary of defense and published in 2005, military analyst Jennifer Kavanagh* reviewed a spate of recent statistical studies on the various factors that determine military performance—experience, training, aptitude, and so forth—and concluded that aptitude is key. A force "made up of personnel with high AFQT [armed forces aptitude test] scores," Kavanagh writes, "contributes to a more effective and accurate team performance."

The evidence is overwhelming. Take tank gunners. You wouldn't think intelligence would have much effect on the ability to shoot straight, but apparently it does. Replacing a gunner who'd scored Category IV on the aptitude test (ranking in the 10-30 percentile) with one who'd scored Category IIIA (50-64 percentile) improved the chances of hitting targets by 34 percent.

In another study cited by the RAND report, 84 three-man teams from the Army's active-duty signal battalions were given the task of making a communications system operational. Teams consisting of Category IIIA personnel had a 67 percent chance of succeeding. Those consisting of Category IIIB (who'd ranked in the 31-49 percentile on the aptitude test) had a 47 percent chance. Those with Category IV personnel had only a 29 percent chance.

The same study of signal battalions took soldiers who had just taken advanced individual training courses and asked them to troubleshoot a faulty piece of communications gear. They passed if they were able to identify at least two technical problems. Smarts trumped training. Among those who had scored Category I on the aptitude test (in the 93-99 percentile), 97 percent passed. Among those who'd scored Category II (in the 65-92 percentile), 78 percent passed. Category IIIA: 60 percent passed. Category IIIB: 43 percent passed. Category IV: a mere 25 percent passed.

The pattern is clear: The higher the score on the aptitude test, the better the performance in the field. This is true for individual soldiers and for units. Moreover, the study showed that adding one high-scoring soldier to a three-man signals team boosted its chance of success by 8 percent (meaning that adding one low-scoring soldier boosts its chance of failure by a similar margin).

Smarter also turns out to be cheaper. One study examined how many Patriot missiles various Army air-defense units had to fire in order to destroy 10 targets. Units with Category I personnel had to fire 20 missiles. Those with Category II had to fire 21 missiles. Category IIIA: 22. Category IIIB: 23. Category IV: 24 missiles. In other words, to perform the same task, Category IV units chewed up 20 percent more hardware than Category I units. For this particular task, since each Patriot missile costs about $2 million, they also chewed up $8 million more of the Army's procurement budget.

Some perspective here: Each year the Army recruits 80,000 new troops—which amount to 16 percent of its 500,000 active-duty soldiers. Even if 12 percent of recruits were Category IV, not just for October but for the entire coming year, they would swell the ranks of Cat IV soldiers overall by just 1.9 percent (0.12 x 0.16 = .0192).

Then again, viewed from another angle, this would double the Army's least desirable soldiers. These are the soldiers that the Army has long shut out of its ranks; that it is now recruiting avidly, out of sheer desperation; and that—according to the military's own studies—seriously degrade the competence of every unit they end up joining. No, things haven't gone to hell in a handbasket, but they're headed in that direction. Every Army officer knows this. And that's why many of them want the United States to get out of Iraq.

[bobthemothafuckinbuilder]

"And that's why many of them want the United States to get out of Iraq"

Uh no. Army officers as well as all other branches don't want any type of bullshit like that. Your political opinoins belong in the fucking trash as a member of the military. It's like me saying in WW2 "yea fuck them jews let em die, let's get out of Europe and go home" what's the difference here? DUTY. You are sworn to do your duty and your political opinoins are #99999999999 and your duty is #1.

[John Birch]

our first duty to hold OUR government responsible...and to ALWAYS question your leaders...especially if your in the military...


and by the way, WW2 wasn't fought to free or save the jews...The US initially suported hitlers programs...we fought only for economic reasons and nothing else...Hilter wanted to export the jewish people to America initially, but our anti-semtic country didn't want them either


if germany had won, they would have controlled iraq and saudi arabia and their oil supplies. thats why we fought that war and WWI too

[bobthemothafuckinbuilder]

Actually the reason we fought was because the countries taken over by Germany owed the U.S. a shitload of money from WW1.

[Dawood]

Since the Sunni / Shia thread was closed I'll put this in here.

There's one thing people don't realize about this Sunni / Shi'ite thing. The so called sunnis that were with saddam, As well as Saddam himself are faaaaar from what this term implies. Sunni is an ascription to the way of the prophet Muhammad and Saddam hussein is too far from being able to ascribe his actions to the methodology of the prophets. One of the leading Sheikhs of Saudi Arabia declared Saddam to be a disbeleiver in Islam due to his rejection of certain verses of the quran, his communist beleifs and setting himself up as one to obeyed other than Allah.
He committed CLEAR disbeleif. The Saudi Govt. , in my opinion has no interest in funding these people. Some saudi organizations may fund certain aspects of the Iraq war, but I don't beleive that the Saudi Govt. does.
The inherent problem with this war, from a muslims standpoint is that it is not a Jihad meant to establish Islam.
It is mostly Iraqis defending themselves from the onslaught of America and trying to rebuild their lives that are in perpetual ruin. Also, there are so many factions at play there with so many different goals. There is no unified body of muslims fighting Americans. The reason for this is the lack of leadership in the Muslim countries and if there were true leadership in the muslim countries America would not be acting so bold.
Like everything else, this was a plan, european colonization was a strategic move to disunite muslims and to divide their hearts. And this Iraq war is a serious power move. It's sad because the demon media has successfully trivialized the plight of anyone muslim by portraying them as barbarians and some muslims have played the barbarian role making the demon medias lyrics sound rhythmic.
It's hard for Americans to see what's really happening over there to these people because it's not really a concern. Americans usually don't become truly concerned until something affects them personally or it shows up in their house. (like the daily news) And the daily news is tailored to suit a particular idea, so It's hard to see through all that unless you look. Thats why the rest of the world has a different opinion than America on a lot of issues because they are exposed to different more objective media. I think most American know that deep down, but another part of American culture is materialism and entertainment designed to take your mind away from reality, so most likely, you'll think , {{man, this doesn't seem right}} , but , youre too busy to look fully into it and you're pressed to develop an opinion, because you don't want to seem out of touch , so , you just adopt the opinion of the people around you.
Nobody want's to act a fool, but, just know that the longer you sleep , the sweeter the snooze seems.

[bobthemothafuckinbuilder]

You seem to overlook the fact that every economy in the middle east is dependant on the U.S.... for example if we were to stop buying oil.. they're fucked there is no other source of income in the middle of the fucking desert.

[KING BLING]

If we stopped buying oil, we would be more fucked...

Which is why envoronmental persuits for alternatives should make sense to both parties - one gets less pollutiuon, the other gets self sustainability. So why is it we haven't thrown Billions of dollars in the war on terror to becoming more independant?

********************************

And Dawood, if nothing else I like having a person who clearly holds the Muslim point of view both spiritually and politically here...but many cultures, including many Arab Muslims (just like Ameerican "Christians") are materialisitic, opressive and distracted too. That said, I think your last paragreaph was a very good presentation of things. BUT, I think people here would benifit more from the things you might on a day to day basis read - for instance, post an article from a media source that supports your point of view rather than just say "Americans don't read shit" and than not really follow it up with anything to prove the rest of the world is doing otherwise...

[John Birch]

WE MUST DEVELOP GEO-THERMAL ENERGY!!!



Dawood I have a question though...do you ever seperate muslim religion from islamic countries and politics? I think your religious arguments would hold more water if you didn't also act as an apologist for islamic nations, esp Saudi Arabia... the ironic thing is, those people would chop off your head quicker than a jewish journalist from the Christan Science Monitor...


any of those people could care less if you practice islam or are a revert etc etc.. To them you are and always will be an American. and most likely they wouldn't rspect you for rejecting Western materialism... what do you think?


Agree? Disagree?

[Dawood]

Originally posted by John Birch@Jan 25 2006, 04:52 AM
WE MUST DEVELOP GEO-THERMAL ENERGY!!!



Dawood I have a question though...do you ever seperate muslim religion from islamic countries and politics? I think your religious arguments would hold more water if you didn't also act as an apologist for islamic nations, esp Saudi Arabia... the ironic thing is, those people would chop off your head quicker than a jewish journalist from the Christan Science Monitor...


any of those people could care less if you practice islam or are a revert etc etc.. To them you are and always will be an American. and most likely they wouldn't rspect you for rejecting Western materialism... what do you think?


Agree? Disagree?
Quoted post


I agree with you on one point. and disagree in another point.
As for seperating Islam from Muslim countries and politics, Yes, definately. The islam that I believe was revealed from the heavens from Allah to the prophet Muhammad is definately not what you you see the people in muslim countries doing in this day and time.
Although, Saudi Arabia is the closest (in this time) to practicing the correct form of Islam becuase they have many scholars there and the rulers of saudi accept advice from the scholars in many religious affairs, but of course , theyre people, and people make mistakes, so
you won't have to go too far to find faults in them. I only defend the saudis on the terrorism issue because I have seen with my own eyes the huge response in the muslim world from saudi arabia combating terrorism. I mean, The terrorists (whoever they were) blew up buildings in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. These people, who are causing chaos and mayhem in the world today even consider the Saudi Govt. as being infidels and would jump at the chance of killing them and replacing them. (do you see what I mean?) Thats why it seems like I defend saudi arabia, becuase I have this peice of information that causes me to doubt when people say the saudis are funding terrorism. Why would they fund their own destruction? Now, if youre talking about saudi citizens , then that's a different story.

As for them considering me an American and chopping my head off, then, I would say, It depends on who I am dealing with. I personnally don't think that any religious level headed Muslim would chop my head off just for being an american. If you saw me, I look like a muslim, I have a big beard and I dress like a muslim. My wife wears a full hijab (loose fitting dress) from head to toe, even covering her head and face. So, I figure, and Allah knows best, that they'd probably pass us up on the street and go for the Jewish journalist.
now, If I started speaking my mind (against them) , then , muslim or not, those same blood thirsty maniacs you see on tv chopping peoples heads off would probably do me the same way. So, yeah, I agree to a degree with you. But, look at John Walker, they didn't kill him. As a matter of fact. I know a guy from Chicago who was in Yemen studying with John Walker before he (John Walker) got recruited to go to Afghanistan. He said that John Walker was one of the most gentle , good natured brothers he'd ever met. But , he got sucked into a Jihadi organisation and ended up, well, you know the rest.
And, for the record, I don't necessarily reject Western Materialsim.
I'm sitting in a coffee shop on my laptop as we speak and I'm about to go to work, so to say that I reject western materialism is an overstatement. It's hard to live here and reject it. But, that's my point when I talk about it. It drowns us. And it dumbs us down. It's a tough struggle to keep your heart alive in this enviroment. You need a balance.

[Flavicon]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20346

[~KRYLON2~]

iraq was the dumbest thing bush could have done

[Flavicon]

^^^ It was "done" by a hell of a lot more than Bush

[Theo.Huxtable]

NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/world/middleeast/25haifa.html

January 25, 2007

In a New Joint U.S.-Iraqi Patrol, the Americans Go First

By DAMIEN CAVE and JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 — In the battle for Baghdad, Haifa Street has changed hands so often that it has taken on the feel of a no man’s land, the deadly space between opposing trenches. On Wednesday, as American and Iraqi troops poured in, the street showed why it is such a sensitive gauge of an urban conflict marked by front lines that melt into confusion, enemies with no clear identity and allies who disappear or do not show up at all.

In a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city, American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn to dislodge Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who have been battling for a stretch of ragged slums and mostly abandoned high rises. But as the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army units who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own.

When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments became lairs for gunmen who flitted from window to window and killed at least one American soldier, with a shot to the head.

Whether the gunfire was coming from Sunni or Shiite insurgents or militia fighters or some of the Iraqi soldiers who had disappeared into the Gotham-like cityscape, no one could say.

“Who the hell is shooting at us?” shouted Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski, whose platoon was jammed into a small room off an alley that was being swept by a sniper’s bullets. “Who’s shooting at us? Do we know who they are?”

Just before the platoon tossed smoke bombs and sprinted through the alley to a more secure position, Sergeant Biletski had a moment to reflect on this spot, which the United States has now fought to regain from a mysterious enemy at least three times in the past two years.

“This place is a failure,” Sergeant Biletski said. “Every time we come here, we have to come back.”

He paused, then said, “Well, maybe not a total failure,” since American troops have smashed opposition on Haifa Street each time they have come in.

With that, Sergeant Biletski ran through the billowing yellow smoke and took up a new position.

The Haifa Street operation, involving Bradley Fighting Vehicles as well as the highly mobile Stryker vehicles, is likely to cause plenty of reflection by the commanders in charge of the Baghdad buildup of more than 20,000 troops. Just how those extra troops will be used is not yet known, but it is likely to mirror at least broadly the Haifa Street strategy of working with Iraqi forces to take on unruly groups from both sides of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide.

The commander of the operation, Lt. Col. Avanulas Smiley of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division, said his forces were not interested in whether opposition came from bullets fired by Sunnis or by Shiites. He conceded that the cost of letting the Iraqi forces learn on the job was to add to the risk involved in the operation.

“This was an Iraqi-led effort and with that come challenges and risks,” Colonel Smiley said. “It can be organized chaos.”

The American units in the operation began moving up Haifa Street from the south by 2 a.m. on Wednesday. A platoon of B Company in the Stryker Brigade secured the roof of a high rise, where an Eminem poster was stuck on the wall of what appeared to be an Iraqi teenager’s room on the top floor. But in a pattern that would be repeated again and again in a series of buildings, there was no one in the apartment.

Many of the Iraqi units that showed up late never seemed to take the task seriously, searching haphazardly, breaking dishes and rifling through personal CD collections in the apartments. Eventually the Americans realized that the Iraqis were searching no more than half of the apartments; at one point the Iraqis completely disappeared, leaving the American unit working with them flabbergasted.

“Where did they go?” yelled Sgt. Jeri A. Gillett. Another soldier suggested, “I say we just let them go and we do this ourselves.”

Then the gunfire began. It would come from high rises across the street, from behind trash piles and sandbags in alleys and from so many other directions that the soldiers began to worry that the Iraqi soldiers were firing at them. Mortars started dropping from across the Tigris River, to the east, in the direction of a Shiite slum.

The only thing that was clear was that no one knew who the enemy was. “The thing is, we wear uniforms — they don’t,” said Specialist Terry Wilson.

At one point the Americans were forced to jog alongside the Strykers on Haifa Street, sheltering themselves as best they could from the gunfire. The Americans finally found the Iraqis and ended up accompanying them into an extremely dangerous and exposed warren of low-slung hovels behind the high rises as gunfire rained down.

American officers tried to persuade the Iraqi soldiers to leave the slum area for better cover, but the Iraqis refused to risk crossing a lane that was being raked by machine-gun fire. “It’s their show,” said Lt. David Stroud, adding that the Americans have orders to defer to the Iraqis in cases like this.

In this surreal setting, about 20 American soldiers were forced at one point to pull themselves one by one up a canted tin roof by a dangling rubber hose and then shimmy along a ledge to another hut. The soldiers were stunned when a small child suddenly walked out of a darkened doorway and an old man started wheezing and crying somewhere inside.

Ultimately the group made it back to the high rises and escaped the sniper in the alley by throwing out the smoke bombs and sprinting to safety. Even though two Iraqis were struck by gunfire, many of the rest could not stop shouting and guffawing with amusement as they ran through the smoke.

One Iraqi soldier in the alley pointed his rifle at an American reporter and pulled the trigger. There was only a click: the weapon had no ammunition. The soldier laughed at his joke.

[stunt double]

I really can't believe the new line of the Bush administration. That Iraq is a fucking mess because Iraqis arent "pulling their weight". It was America that started the war, even going against the UN. It is up to America to fix their own mess, it is that simple. If America stays in Iraq they will continue fighting an increasingly organised insurgency, and begin taking much greater casualties than at present, with no foreseeable end.
On the other hand, if America leaves, they withdraw in defeat. Essentially being beaten by a guerilla force. Providing a huge propaganda boost for the cause of militant radical Islam.

[Juan Fuentes]

yeah "militant islam" will form...but dont u want to punch back the guy that punched u first without a reason?

the answer is not that simple,if america gets out of iraq it wont go along with their agenda,so they wont,if they did and really wanted "peace" for the world,they would have to spend all the money to help people,water supplies,hygene,aids,illnesses,hunger, instead to make wars and people wouldnt hate america,they would be an example and they wouldnt want to kill them,and after all they dont attack the usa because they envy their "freedoms" 911 was an inside job,an excuse to make the wars we have today,and the ones to come,i hope not.

islam is not the problem,terrorism its not what is shown by the mainstream media,the problem is these royal families that have been rulling for hundreds of years and control all the TOOLS(some completly, some a lot, some a little) to distract the population from their agenda.


peace

[stunt double]

yeah juan, i think we are on the same page with this. anyway... america's current warmongering in the middle east is similar to trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
i never said that hatred of america in that region is unfounded, in fact i think to call certain groups "terrorist organisations", motivated by "hate" or "evil" as bush so reductively puts it. denies the past 60 or more years of exploitation and oppression by western interests in the middle east.
I don't know how much i buy into the idea that 911 was an inside job, but it has certainly opened up some lucrative war contracts, and given the bush administration a carte blanche to turn america into an unrivalled military aggressor.

[Hullucination]

^^

1998.... Fuck our government. Im freal bout to pull some Fight Club type shit in the near future. End of my rope.


im down to fuck sum shit up

[teefz still gold]

yeah juan, i think we are on the same page with this. anyway... america's current warmongering in the middle east is similar to trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
i never said that hatred of america in that region is unfounded, in fact i think to call certain groups "terrorist organisations", motivated by "hate" or "evil" as bush so reductively puts it. denies the past 60 or more years of exploitation and oppression by western interests in the middle east.
I don't know how much i buy into the idea that 911 was an inside job, but it has certainly opened up some lucrative war contracts, and given the bush administration a carte blanche to turn america into an unrivalled military aggressor.


couldnt have said it better myself

[Larry Pubes]

dudez! iraq is so ill! i can't wait for the hollywood movie! shit!

!

[yumone]

dudez! iraq is so ill! i can't wait for the hollywood movie! shit!

!

:lol: :lol:

[Juan Fuentes]

peace stunt double
lots of war contracts have opened up after 911,it is true,and just look around you,all the police and hysteria,i remember before 911 there wasnt so much cops and security guards for everything like it is now,also one was more free to walk around without being pulled over and not to mention the illegal searching the pigs do because u seem suspicious.


and about the inside job thing,i dont want to repeat myself over and over,but it is something everyone should know,the evidence is clear,maybe u checked it and something is holding you back from accepting it 100%,it happened to me at first.this is something bananas...

peace

[Larry Pubes]

that something that is holding me back, personally, would be, um, uh, aaahh...critical thinking.

[russell jones]

check

[Theo.Huxtable]

chance of war between u.s. and iran escalating...



U.S.-Iran tensions could trigger war
By JIM KRANE and ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writers
25 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Citing Iranian involvement with Iraqi militias and Tehran's nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration has shifted to offense in its confrontation with Iran — building up the U.S. military in the Persian Gulf and promising more aggressive moves against Iranian operatives in Iraq and Lebanon.

The behind-the-scenes struggle between the two nations could explode into open warfare over a single misstep, analysts and U.S. military officials warn.

Iraq has become a proxy battleground between Washington and Tehran, which is challenging — at least rhetorically — America's dominance of the Gulf. That has worried even Iraq's U.S.-backed Shiite prime minister, who — in a reflection of Iraq's complexity — also has close ties to Iran.

Iran and the United States are already sparring on the ground.

On Jan. 20, militants kidnapped and killed four American soldiers in a raid in Karbala, and a fifth was killed in the firefight. A U.S. defense official said one possibility under study is that Iranian agents either executed or masterminded the attack, a suspicion based on the sophisticated and unusual methods used in the attack, including weapons and uniforms that may have been American.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe is ongoing.

There has been speculation that the Karbala assault may have been in retaliation for the arrest of five Iranians by U.S. troops in northern Iraq.

Those five Iranians, who were arrested in the northern city of Irbil, included two members of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard force that provides weapons, training and other support to Shiite militants in the Middle East, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said last week. Iraqi and Iranian officials maintain the five were diplomats.

Since the Karbala raid, U.S. saber-rattling has intensified. President Bush said this week that U.S. forces in Iraq would take action against Iranian operatives in the country, while insisting he had no intention of attacking Iran.

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly," Bush told National Public Radio.

Although little evidence has been made public, U.S. officials have long insisted that Iran was supplying weapons and training to Shiite militias in Iraq, including some that have killed American troops.

The No. 2 U.S. general in Iraq told USA Today in an interview published Tuesday that Iran was supplying Iraqi Shiite militias with a variety of powerful weapons, including Katyusha rockets and armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenades.

"We have weapons that we know through serial numbers ... trace back to Iran," Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said.

The Air Force is considering more forceful patrols on the Iraqi side of the border with Iran to counter the smuggling of weapons and bomb supplies, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing senior Pentagon officials.

The U.S. is also building up its military presence in the Gulf in what it says is a show of strength directed at Iran. A second aircraft carrier is heading for the region, and Patriot missile batteries are being deployed.

Since Bush announced his new Iraq strategy in early January, Iranian officials have raised the alarm repeatedly that the U.S. intends to attack. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran is "ready for anything" in its confrontation with the United States.

A newspaper close to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week threatened retaliation for any U.S. military action — including stopping oil traffic through the Gulf's strategic Hormuz Straits and attacks on U.S. interests. The top editor of the Kayhan daily warned that Iran will turn the Middle East into "hell" for the United States and Israel if America attacks.

Iran expert Ray Takeyh said the risks are all the greater because Tehran has an "unhealthy" disregard for American power, which "enhances the prospect of a miscalculation."

Prof. Gary Sick, a leading authority on Iran, believes the U.S. is seeking to divert world attention from the crisis in Iraq and organize a coalition of Israel and conservative Sunni Arab states to confront Iran.

"I see this as a very dangerous long-term policy because it promotes the idea that Sunnis and Shiites should be distrustful of each other, and I think that could come back and bite us later on," he said.

Iran and the U.S. also are in dispute over Tehran's nuclear program. The United States accuses Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons — an allegation Tehran denies. Iran's defiant refusal to suspend uranium enrichment prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose limited economic sanctions.

The U.S. has also beefed up support for Lebanon's government in its power struggle with Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that Washington accuses of acting in Iran's interests.

But Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations said the U.S. was finding it hard "to calibrate its message" to distinguish "between a stern message and a warning of attack."

The war of words has raised fears among both Democrats and Republicans in Congress that the United States and Iran are drifting toward armed conflict at a time when America is struggling against determined foes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It has also unnerved the Iraqi government, many of whose members have close ties to Iran.

"We have told the Iranians and the Americans, `We know that you have a problem with each other but we're asking you, please, solve your problems outside of Iraq,'" Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, told CNN on Wednesday. "We do not want the American forces to take Iraq as a base to attack Iran ... we will not accept Iran using Iraq to attack American forces. But does this exist? It exists and I assure you it exists."

As the rhetoric grows more strident, a U.S. military official in the Gulf likened the U.S.-Iran standoff to the buildup in hostility in Europe before World War I, when the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne triggered a tragic war that engulfed a continent.

"A mistake could be made and you could end up in something that neither side ever really wanted, and suddenly it's August 1914 all over again," the U.S. officer said on condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the issue. "I really believe neither side wants a fight."

Iranian coast guard vessels recently veered into territorial waters on the Arab side of the Gulf, an event that could have been viewed as either a mistake or a provocation, the officer said. Both sides are on tenterhooks. "A boat crosses a line ... but what does it mean? You've got to be very careful about overreacting," the officer said.

Even if Iran pulled back from Iraq's conflict, it might not end the country's violence, said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

"The truth is that Iraq is a mess. It is in a state of low-level civil war. And all of these groups are largely self-motivated," he said on the Council on Foreign Relations Web site. "But its much easier to blame it on the Iranians."

In Tehran, political analyst Hermidas Bavand said U.S. force increases were leading many Iranians to believe Washington is looking to pick a fight.

"It's an extremely dangerous situation," Bavand said. "I don't think Tehran wants war under any circumstances. But there might be an accidental event that could escalate into a large confrontation."

[Theo.Huxtable]

yo, if this war with iran pops off, can we officially call it world war iii? because that means the US and allies have taken military action in 3 countries within the past 5 years. that's not counting smaller actions in somalia and the phillipines. or ww4 if you consider the cold war wwiii.

[Larry Pubes]

the shit will be insane if chen-dawg and bushslice attack. sooo many countries will be pulled into it, shit could go rugged and raw nuclear steez..

this is like 3-4months old but..

http://harpers.org/TheNextWar.html

The Next War

Posted on Thursday, October 19, 2006. Originally from Harper's Magazine, October 2006.
By Daniel Ellsberg.

A hidden crisis is under way. Many government insiders are aware of serious plans for war with Iran, but Congress and the public remain largely in the dark. The current situation is very like that of 1964, the year preceding our overt, open-ended escalation of the Vietnam War, and 2002, the year leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In both cases, if one or more conscientious insiders had closed the information gap with unauthorized disclosures to the public, a disastrous war might have been averted entirely.

My own failure to act, in time, to that effect in 1964 was pointed out to me by Wayne Morse thirty-five years ago. Morse had been one of only two U.S. senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 7, 1964. He had believed, correctly, that President Lyndon Johnson would treat the resolution as a congressional declaration of war. His colleagues, however, accepted White House assurances that the president sought “no wider war” and had no intention of expanding hostilities without further consulting them. They believed that they were simply expressing bipartisan support for U.S. air attacks on North Vietnam three days earlier, which the president and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had told them were in “retaliation” for the “unequivocal,” “unprovoked” attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on U.S. destroyers “on routine patrol” in “international waters.”

Each of the assurances above had been false, a conscious lie. That they were lies, though, had only been revealed to the public seven years later with the publication of the Pentagon Papers, several thousand pages of top-secret documents on U.S. decision-making in Vietnam that I had released to the press. The very first installment, published by the New York Times on June 13, 1971, had proven the official account of the Tonkin Gulf episode to be a deliberate deception.

When we met in September, Morse had just heard me mention to an audience that all of that evidence of fraud had been in my own Pentagon safe at the time of the Tonkin Gulf vote. (By coincidence, I had started work as a special assistant to an assistant secretary of defense the day of the alleged attack—which had not, in fact, occurred at all.) After my talk, Morse, who had been a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1964, said to me, “If you had given those documents to me at the time, the Tonkin Gulf resolution would never have gotten out of committee. And if it had somehow been brought up on the floor of the Senate for a vote, it would never have passed.”

He was telling me, it seemed, that it had been in my power, seven years earlier, to avert the deaths so far of 50,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese, with many more to come. It was not something I was eager to hear. After all, I had just been indicted on what eventually were twelve federal felony counts, with a possible sentence of 115 years in prison, for releasing the Pentagon Papers to the public. I had consciously accepted that prospect in some small hope of shortening the war. Morse was saying that I had missed a real opportunity to prevent the war altogether.

My first reaction was that Morse had overestimated the significance of the Tonkin Gulf resolution and, therefore, the alleged consequences of my not blocking it in August. After all, I felt, Johnson would have found another occasion to get such a resolution passed, or gone ahead without one, even if someone had exposed the fraud in early August.

Years later, though, the thought hit me: What if I had told Congress and the public, later in the fall of 1964, the whole truth about what was coming, with all the documents I had acquired in my job by September, October, or November? Not just, as Morse had suggested, the contents of a few files on the events surrounding the Tonkin Gulf incident—all that I had in early August—but the drawerfuls of critical working papers, memos, estimates, and detailed escalation options revealing the evolving plans of the Johnson Administration for a wider war, expected to commence soon after the election. In short, what if I had put out before the end of the year, whether before or after the November election, all of the classified papers from that period that I did eventually disclose in 1971?

Had I done so, the public and Congress would have learned that Johnson’s campaign theme, “we seek no wider war,” was a hoax. They would have learned, in fact, that the Johnson Administration had been heading in secret toward essentially the same policy of expanded war that his presidential rival, Senator Barry Goldwater, openly advocated—a policy that the voters overwhelmingly repudiated at the polls.

I would have been indicted then, as I was seven years later, and probably imprisoned. But America would have been at peace during those years. It was only with that reflection, perhaps a decade after the carnage finally ended, that I recognized Morse had been right about my personal share of responsibility for the whole war.

Not just mine alone. Any one of a hundred officials—some of whom foresaw the whole catastrophe—could have told the hidden truth to Congress, with documents. Instead, our silence made us all accomplices in the ensuing slaughter.

* * *

The run-up to the 1964 Tonkin Gulf resolution was almost exactly parallel to the run-up to the 2002 Iraq war resolution.

In both cases, the president and his top Cabinet officers consciously deceived Congress and the public about a supposed short-run threat in order to justify and win support for carrying out preexisting offensive plans against a country that was not a near-term danger to the United States. In both cases, the deception was essential to the political feasibility of the program precisely because expert opinion inside the government foresaw costs, dangers, and low prospects of success that would have doomed the project politically if there had been truly informed public discussion beforehand. And in both cases, that necessary deception could not have succeeded without the obedient silence of hundreds of insiders who knew full well both the deception and the folly of acting upon it.

One insider aware of the Iraq plans, and knowledgeable about the inevitably disastrous result of executing those plans, was Richard Clarke, chief of counterterrorism for George W. Bush and adviser to three presidents before him. He had spent September 11, 2001, in the White House, coordinating the nation’s response to the attacks. He reports in his memoir, Against All Enemies, discovering the next morning, to his amazement, that most discussions there were about attacking Iraq.

Clarke told Bush and Rumsfeld that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, or with its perpetrator, Al Qaeda. As Clarke said to Secretary of State Colin Powell that afternoon, “Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response”—which Rumsfeld was already urging—“would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.”

Actually, Clarke foresaw that it would be much worse than that. Attacking Iraq not only would be a crippling distraction from the task of pursuing the real enemy but would in fact aid that enemy: “Nothing America could have done would have provided al Qaeda and its new generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country.”

I single out Clarke—by all accounts among the best of the best of public servants—only because of his unique role in counterterrorism and because, thanks to his illuminating 2004 memoir, we know his thoughts at that time, and, in particular, the intensity of his anguish and frustration. Such a memoir allows us, as we read each new revelation, to ask a simple question: What difference might it have made to events if he had told us this at the time?

Clarke was not, of course, the only one who could have told us, or told Congress. We know from other accounts that both of his key judgments—the absence of linkage between Al Qaeda and Saddam and his correct prediction that “attacking Iraq would actually make America less secure and strengthen the broader radical Islamic terrorist movement”—were shared by many professionals in the CIA, the State Department, and the military.

Yet neither of these crucial, expert conclusions was made available to Congress or the public, by Clarke or anyone else, in the eighteen-month run-up to the war. Even as they heard the president lead the country to the opposite, false impressions, toward what these officials saw as a disastrous, unjustified war, they felt obliged to keep their silence.

Costly as their silence was to their country and its victims, I feel I know their mind-set. I had long prized my own identity as a keeper of the president’s secrets. In 1964 it never even occurred to me to break the many secrecy agreements I had signed, in the Marines, at the Rand Corporation, in the Pentagon. Although I already knew the Vietnam War was a mistake and based on lies, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president (and to my promises of secrecy, on which my own career as a president’s man depended). I’m not proud that it took me years of war to awaken to the higher loyalties owed by every government official to the rule of law, to our soldiers in harm’s way, to our fellow citizens, and, explicitly, to the Constitution, which every one of us had sworn an oath “to support and uphold.”

It took me that long to recognize that the secrecy agreements we had signed frequently conflicted with our oath to uphold the Constitution. That conflict arose almost daily, unnoticed by me or other officials, whenever we were secretly aware that the president or other executive officers were lying to or misleading Congress. In giving priority, in effect, to my promise of secrecy—ignoring my constitutional obligation—I was no worse or better than any of my Vietnam-era colleagues, or those who later saw the Iraq war approaching and failed to warn anyone outside the executive branch.

Ironically, Clarke told Vanity Fair in 2004 that in his own youth he had ardently protested “the complete folly” of the Vietnam War and that he “wanted to get involved in national security in 1973 as a career so that Vietnam didn’t happen again.” He is left today with a sense of failure:

It’s an arrogant thing to think, Could I have ever stopped another Vietnam? But it really filled me with frustration that when I saw Iraq coming I wasn’t able to do anything. After having spent thirty years in national security and having been in some senior-level positions you would think that I might be able to have some influence, some tiny influence. But I couldn’t have any.
But it was not too arrogant, I believe, for Clarke to aspire to stop this second Vietnam personally. He actually had a good chance to do so, throughout 2002, the same one Senator Morse had pointed out to me.

Instead of writing a memoir to be cleared for publication in 2004, a year after Iraq had been invaded, Clarke could have made his knowledge of the war to come, and its danger to our security, public before the war. He could have supported his testimony with hundreds of files of documents from his office safe and computer, to which he then still had access. He could have given these to both the media and the then Democratic-controlled Senate.

“If I had criticized the president to the press as a special assistant” in the summer of 2002, Clarke told Larry King in March 2004, “I would have been fired within an hour.” That is undoubtedly true. But should that be the last word on that course? To be sure, virtually all bureaucrats would agree with him, as he told King, that his

only responsible options at that point were either to resign quietly or to “spin” for the White House to the press, as he did. But that is just the working norm I mean to question here.

His unperceived alternative, I wish to suggest, was precisely to court being fired for telling the truth to the public, with documentary evidence, in the summer of 2002. For doing that, Clarke would not only have lost his job, his clearance, and his career as an executive official; he would almost surely have been prosecuted, and he might have gone to prison. But the controversy that ensued would not have been about hindsight and blame. It would have been about whether war on Iraq would make the United States safer, and whether it was otherwise justified.

That debate did not occur in 2002—just as a real debate about war in Vietnam did not occur in 1964—thanks to the disciplined reticence of Clarke and many others. Whatever his personal fate, which might have been severe, his disclosures would have come before the war. Perhaps, instead of it.

* * *

We face today a crisis similar to those of 1964 and 2002, a crisis hidden once again from the public and most of Congress. Articles by Seymour Hersh and others have revealed that, as in both those earlier cases, the president has secretly directed the completion, though not yet execution, of military operational plans—not merely hypothetical “contingency plans” but constantly updated plans, with movement of forces and high states of readiness, for prompt implementation on command—for attacking a country that, unless attacked itself, poses no threat to the United States: in this case, Iran.

According to these reports, many high-level officers and government officials are convinced that our president will attempt to bring about regime change in Iran by air attack; that he and his vice president have long been no less committed, secretly, to doing so than they were to attacking Iraq; and that his secretary of defense is as madly optimistic about the prospects for fast, cheap military success there as he was in Iraq.

Even more ominously, Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official, reported in The American Conservative a year ago that Vice President Cheney’s office had directed contingency planning for “a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons” and that “several senior Air Force officers” involved in the planning were “appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objection.”

Several of Hersh’s sources have confirmed both the detailed operational planning for use of nuclear weapons against deep underground Iranian installations and military resistance to this prospect, which led several senior officials to consider resigning. Hersh notes that opposition by the Joint Chiefs in April led to White House withdrawal of the “nuclear option”—for now, I would say. The operational plans remain in existence, to be drawn upon for a “decisive” blow if the president deems it necessary.

Many of these sources regard the planned massive air attack—with or without nuclear weapons—as almost sure to be catastrophic for the Middle East, the position of the United States in the world, our troops in Iraq, the world economy, and U.S. domestic security. Thus they are as deeply concerned about these prospects as many other insiders were in the year before the Iraq invasion. That is why, unlike in the lead-up to Vietnam or Iraq, some insiders are leaking to reporters. But since these disclosures—so far without documents and without attribution—have not evidently had enough credibility to raise public alarm, the question is whether such officials have yet reached the limit of their responsibilities to our country.

Assuming Hersh’s so-far anonymous sources mean what they say—that this is, as one puts it, “a juggernaut that has to be stopped”—I believe it is time for one or more of them to go beyond fragmentary leaks unaccompanied by documents. That means doing what no other active official or consultant has ever done in a timely way: what neither Richard Clarke nor I nor anyone else thought of doing until we were no longer officials, no longer had access to current documents, after bombs had fallen and thousands had died, years into a war. It means going outside executive channels, as officials with contemporary access, to expose the president’s lies and oppose his war policy publicly before the war, with unequivocal evidence from inside.

Simply resigning in silence does not meet moral or political responsibilities of officials rightly “appalled” by the thrust of secret policy. I hope that one or more such persons will make the sober decision—accepting sacrifice of clearance and career, and risk of prison—to disclose comprehensive files that convey, irrefutably, official, secret estimates of costs and prospects and dangers of the military plans being considered. What needs disclosure is the full internal controversy, the secret critiques as well as the arguments and claims of advocates of war and nuclear “options”—the Pentagon Papers of the Middle East. But unlike in 1971, the ongoing secret debate should be made available before our war in the region expands to include Iran, before the sixty-one-year moratorium on nuclear war is ended violently, to give our democracy a chance to foreclose either of those catastrophes.

The personal risks of doing this are very great. Yet they are not as great as the risks of bodies and lives we are asking daily of over 130,000 young Americans—with many yet to join them—in an unjust war. Our country has urgent need for comparable courage, moral and civil courage, from its public servants. They owe us the truth before the next war begins.

[Juan Fuentes]

your iraq dollars to work
3 minute youtube video of what the government does with money that is used to rebuilt iraq.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_BFmLPo3E


looks like someone is sticking his hand in the bag...


peace

[capostatus44]

About Saudi Arabia and there influence on all this...........Saudi Arabia has had a long history of funding mujahadin and exporting wahabism all over the world ever since there tremendous oil revenues began to come in which has created a lot of problems. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the U.S., and Iran all put money and arms into the Afghan mujahadin. The Saudis and the Pakistani ISI(secret Service) continued to fund and supply arms to the Taliban to isolate Iranian shia influence in Central Asia and the rest of the middle east. Saudi Arabia only stopped funding the Taliban when mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, insulted Prince Turki and Saudi Arabia, when he asked the Taliban to stop the Al Queda training camps that the Taliban was allowing to operate in Afghanistan. They have and still do export wahabiism all over the world and have really had a tough time figuring out how to do this and at the same time have an effective/responsible foreign policy. When all the fighters went to Afghanistan in the 80's, they went on to help set up madrasas along the border w/ pakistan and from these the Taliban, which means students in Dari/Farsi/Persian sprouted up with an extreme and misconstrued version of islam that came from the ideaology of dissaffected war torn youths who were taught by for the most part by uneducated mullahs with little more than an elementary religious education. Anyway Im not too sure how much the saudi government has had to do with Central Asian and eastern asian mujahadin but all the wahabi fighters that remained there are not liked very much. There outsiders with an extreme views and they are very intolerant of the Sufi orders, which are very important to these communities. Anyway point is wahabism is not only a religious view but it was also a tool to consolidate power in Saudi Arabia by the Al-Saud family and they used it to scorn tribal leaders who did not submit to them. Anyway there are so many princes that some may fund wahabi endeavors over seas and some dont, but they are definately questionable and not any better than Iran. Pakistan is also a questionable allie.......

[cola0793]

no shit...
so far i think its been like 9,000,000,000 dollars or is going to be soon
originally was gonna be around like 300 mill
stoopid fuckers...

[Juan Fuentes]

no shit...
so far i think its been like 9,000,000,000 dollars or is going to be soon
originally was gonna be around like 300 mill
stoopid fuckers...

if that money was used for food,water,hygiene,medicine and building houses...
the world wouldnt hate america,still it is wrong,because not all americans are hungry for blood like those that want the war to continue...

peace

[russell jones]

nice

[cola0793]

if that money was used for food,water,hygiene,medicine and building houses...
the world wouldnt hate america,still it is wrong,because not all americans are hungry for blood like those that want the war to continue...

peace


and bush just wanted to succeed where his dad failed with desert storm and got way tooo in over his head and now we're continuing?? wtf? send more troops!!!! no you fucking idiot you got sadam and if you think theres taliban and terriorist in baghdad then why the hell arent we in other countrys that obviously have terrorist??
and we might do a war with iran ive been told...
its just about fucking oil and showing our superiority to the rest of the world
ZOMGZ THEY MIGHT HAVE NUCLEAR WEPONS!!!!!:0
everyone has nuclear weapons get over it

and inform me where im wrong because i know i am in many places and havent really read up on politics or current event reguarlay like i used to:D

[Larry Pubes]

$9billion???
try $365,000,000,000.

you know what's super ill? 1000 dead in 1 week.
my boss the other day mentioned that he thought afghanistan was 'worse than iraq'.
i just about choked on my tuna sammich.
you know what else is ill? bush asking for $29billion more and then with a straight face mentioning he is putting america on the track to reducing it's staggering deficit to nothing in 5 years. pure awesomelarity.

[Juan Fuentes]

now the next war in iran which it is in their agenda,they are waiting for the number of the calendar to become more clear which is blurry due to the lack of evidence to go in and attack.
but its also weird,the shia killing militias are working with the government and they control the police(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q40i4Hh3N3I , bbc report,6 minutes,a trailer to a short documentary that u can watch at youtube,"the death squads(iraq)"),iran has secret agents attacking people in iraq and thats what the "civil war" its all about,the shias want payback for saddam together with land and power and once they are used by their puppet masters theyll be killed like saddam was killed after being used,u cant negociate with the western/english/zionist leaders...

peace

[QuEaZy]

So does anyone on here have a first hand knowledge on what is really going on in Iraq. Or is it that everyone watches too much TV

[Larry Pubes]

holy shit, 9billion is per month:
“The steadily rising cost of the Iraq war will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year…as the price of replacing lost, destroyed and aging equipment mounts.” (Reuters, January 19, 2007)

[Larry Pubes]

So does anyone on here have a first hand knowledge on what is really going on in Iraq. Or is it that everyone watches too much TV

this makes alot of sense.

[Juan Fuentes]

So does anyone on here have a first hand knowledge on what is really going on in Iraq. Or is it that everyone watches too much TV

not 100% but if u do watch tv for iraq info,forget it if u think u know what even know what happens in your own country.

there are american with english,australian,canadian and some other troops invading it,building bunkers and military bases,killing anyone who disapproves their idea.
so called sunni muslims fight the invaders and shia killing squads not civilians.
shias take part of the government and police killing sunnis civilians for payback from saddam.
and much more that we dont know,the thing is america is not winning anything,and the iraqis are resisting.

peace

[Slum Lord]

NO SHIT..?

[KRUM]

Why can't we all just get along dun? (A single tear rolls down cheek)

[cola0793]

$9billion???
try $365,000,000,000.

you know what's super ill? 1000 dead in 1 week.
my boss the other day mentioned that he thought afghanistan was 'worse than iraq'.
i just about choked on my tuna sammich.
you know what else is ill? bush asking for $29billion more and then with a straight face mentioning he is putting america on the track to reducing it's staggering deficit to nothing in 5 years. pure awesomelarity.

i meant 9 trillion haha i suck at numbers....
yea i know
and cancelling shitloads of programs and organzations and shit to take their money
awesome guy

[El Mamerro]

So does anyone on here have a first hand knowledge on what is really going on in Iraq. Or is it that everyone watches too much TV

Not really, we mostly use the internet. Which of course is waaaaay more reliable.

[russell jones]

I am currently using telekinesis to rectify the situation.

[Theo.Huxtable]

so called sunni muslims fight the invaders and shia killing squads not civilians.


that's a lie. sunnis drive carbombs into shia marketplaces and kill men women and children (civilians). the shia death squads came as a result of sunnis bombing their holiest shrine last spring, the Golden Mosque of Sammarra, which was the breaking point of the Shiites' show of restraint and patientce towards constant Sunni attacks.

[Cracked Ass]

The number is 2.9 trillion, and that's the budget Bush submitted to Congress. Which they are bitch-slapping down. It's a ridiculous attempt to slash almost every non-military program and boost military spending to its highest ever.
The lunacy of this idiot is staggering. For eight billion a day we can cure AIDS and cancer and educate every American child to a top-notch, best-in-the-world degree and have a shitload left over to fix national healthcare and fund social security for a while longer. Impeachment is the least we can do.
Here's a mind-blowingly stupid but true story: in the early days of the new attempted Iraqi government, the US send TWELVE BILLION DOLLARS IN CASH as aid money. Yes, I said cash: something like 3 tons of pallets of nothing but Frankie faces, straight into a war zone. Most of it disappeared and cannot be accounted for.
WHY IS THIS FUCKING IDIOT RUNNING WHAT USED TO BE THE DOPEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD?

[Juan Fuentes]

that's a lie. sunnis drive carbombs into shia marketplaces and kill men women and children (civilians). the shia death squads came as a result of sunnis bombing their holiest shrine last spring, the Golden Mosque of Sammarra, which was the breaking point of the Shiites' show of restraint and patientce towards constant Sunni attacks.

sammarra...are you tempting me to tell you it was the usa who did it?,because i know u know whats the "conspiracy" on that one,but we live in two different dimentions hux so dont ask me for details.
some sunnis do kills shias but a high percentage fight the invaders,some shias fight the invaders but the percentage on that its smaller .being mostly in power makes them pro-invasion because it benefits them(just for a limited amount of weeks until they see the outcome).


peace

[Theo.Huxtable]

sammarra...are you tempting me to tell you it was the usa who did it?,because i know u know whats the "conspiracy" on that one,but we live in two different dimentions hux so dont ask me for details.
some sunnis do kills shias but a high percentage fight the invaders,some shias fight the invaders but the percentage on that its smaller .being mostly in power makes them pro-invasion because it benefits them(just for a limited amount of weeks until they see the outcome).


peace

it wouldn't surprise me if you told me it was a conspiracy because you think pretty much everything in the world is a conspiracy. there is no such ridiculous evidence that the says US drove a carbomb to blow up the golden mosque, but there is all the evidence in the world that points to sunni extremists. why on earth would the US want to provoke a civil war by bombing a mosque when the US is trying to stabilize iraq. yes, you are living in a different dimension. i'm living in the dimension of rationality, logic, and sense. you're living in a fictional conspiracy-theorist, anti-establishment, tarot-card, dollar-bill-folding world. you are so far gone it is unbelievable.

the fact is, MOST sunni attacks are against shia, not against coalition forces. you can check then numbers yourself. nearly 100,000 iraqis have died so far, and most of the deaths are shia that have died at the hand of sunni. if sunni are mainly attacking coalition forces and not shia, then explain why a little over 3,000 coalition forces have been killed compared to close to 100,000 Iraqis? yes, a portion of those were killed by coalition, but the vast majority is the result of sectarian violence, most of which the sunnis were the agressors.

also, all shia are not "pro-invader." if you've ever heard of muqtada al-sadr and his mahdi army, you'd know they are an Iranian-backed Shia militia that is anti-US. they've refrained from attacking US forces because they were allowed to partake in the Iraqi government, and now have a bit of political power. but they've attacked coalition forces in the past.

[Larry Pubes]

$2.9trillsz. yea, that's even awesomer. i heard it was only $4billy-on, but whatever. it's all good though...we gotta open up iraq, iran and the rest of the middle east so the minority super rich can secure profitable investment opportunities while the general public pays in blood, sweat and tearz. shit is unbelievably gnarly.
once the soft war against iran gets upgraded to a hard war, things are going to be soooo pimp.

[russell jones]

If we go to war with Iran, I'll ........

[Theo.Huxtable]

i know, right? there's been enough wars.

whatever happened to just focusing on afghanistan and al qaeda terrorists.

[capostatus44]

some sunnis do kills shias but a high percentage fight the invaders,some shias fight the invaders but the percentage on that its smaller .being mostly in power makes them pro-invasion because it benefits them(just for a limited amount of weeks until they see the outcome).


peace


Ummmm the sunni groups under the Islamic State Of Iraq (al-Qaeda in Iraq, Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura (Army of the Victorious Sect), Monotheism Supporters Brigades, Saray al-Jihad Group, al-Ghuraba Brigades, and al-Ahwal Brigades)hate shias just as much as foreign fighters. Many of the groups include a whole lot of footage in their propaganda videos on shias, and there have been a couple recently that just focus on shias by devoting the whole video to mahdi army hostage interviews, sadr & other imam speeches, and shia executions. Pretty much as soon as we leave they are no longer going to have to target foreigners and theyre going to devote their whole operation to killing shias since their aim is to set up a new caliphate in Iraq.

Check out www.hanein.net .... Sunni insurgent forum

[Larry Pubes]

i hate the term 'al qaeda in iraq'....

[RAWoNe]

Does anybody else forsee Bush taking Irans "confidence that US will not invade" as a wager and invade the shit out of Iran. I mean, with this man, anything could happen. If people like my boy werent getting shot at and sectarian violence wasnt raging, or the whole region wasnt plagued by death, it really would be a quite laughable situation. Bush really has "done it now"

[capostatus44]

i hate the term 'al qaeda in iraq'....

Thats what they call themselves

[Larry Pubes]

really? i thought that was a white house/media fabrication.

[capostatus44]

really? i thought that was a white house/media fabrication.

Well I guess the technical name is al-Qaeda jihad organization in the Land of the Two Rivers but yeah they actually call themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the creator of it but he was killed....It does sound like some homo thing the whitehouse would come up with like the axis of evil

[Theo.Huxtable]

yes true capostatus, they do call themselves "al-qaeda in iraq" (for short), and the actual name is the one you gave.

but what's interesting is, alluding to what Larry Pubes said, al qaeda was a name branded by the US government. "al qaeda" was just the phrase used by bin laden and his men at the end of the soviet-afghan war, but it was more or less referring to their "database" of their operations. it wasn't referring to the name of their "group." bin laden doesn't see his movement as an "al qaeda" movement, but the movement/jihad of ALL islam. of course, it would be a mistake for the US to cite Islam as the culprit so they have to create organizations and give it a name. this began prior to 9/11 when prosecuting the '98 embassy bombers -- in order to indict Osama Bin Laden, they had to use similar tactics they used against the mafia when indicting the dons and cappos -- which meant having to view them as an organization like they view the mafia. when in reality al qaeda isn't an organization like the mafia, but rather a looseknit, widespread idealogy

but following the 98 US embassy bombings in Africa, the USS Cole bombings, and then 9/11, "al qaeda" in reference to bin laden and his followers became so mainstream in the media that eventually the terrorists and insurgents themselves would refer to themselves as being "al qaeda."

[Larry Pubes]

the technical name is waaaay better.

[stunt double]

Does anybody else forsee Bush taking Irans "confidence that US will not invade" as a wager and invade the shit out of Iran. I mean, with this man, anything could happen. If people like my boy werent getting shot at and sectarian violence wasnt raging, or the whole region wasnt plagued by death, it really would be a quite laughable situation. Bush really has "done it now"
yeah, the really sad fucking thing is that this shit has never really affected bush or any of his cronies. none of their fam are getting shot up, they arent getting bombs dropped on their homes. in fact this war has been so fucking lucrative for war and oil contracts, they are loving it. the region is now competely destabilised, and will be for the forseeable future. for real, fuck bush.

[Juan Fuentes]

ive seen videos,and read many articles how the shia want to dominate the land and are killing any sunnis they find,like a payback for what saddam did to them.

the best video out there about this stuff its "the death squads(iraq)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q40i4Hh3N3I preview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZBOj__fMxc part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3RP92AXN84 part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Viw0qWWW0Uo part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ2439JX044 part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1JTi9pD9xo part 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtMc5HuYi3o Iraqi Death Squads posing as Police cnn zionist news

the usa knows their ignorance can be used to kill the sunnis minority and they tell their mullahs to incite them to do it(rich guys live in palaces and wear turbans),like there is videos of fatwas(religious orders by leaders of the mainstream faces of the belief) issued against sunnis, and usa is funding them like they funded saddam theyll get rid of both sides.

peace

[Dawood]

If we go to war with Iran, I'll .......




not that I'm pointing my finger accusingly, just looking out for you, but, statements like that can get you in more trouble than you intended

[Dawood]

let me shed some light on this Sunni / shia thing, fisrt off, let's get it straight, SADDAM WAS NOT A SUNNI. He wasn't a shia either, but a sunni in the religion of Islam is a person who follows the "sunnah" meaning the "way" of the prophet Muhammad. Sunni's don't blow up mosques, even Shia Mosques, Once a person starts blowing up Mosques or other buildings he becomes a terrorist, and terrorists are not sunnis because sunnis follow the way of the Prophet Muhammad and he was not a terrorist either.

[r3ader]

so dawood - and i'm not trying to pick a fight - was Saddam not a Sunni because he was secular or because of his violent attacks on other Muslims?

[tellurian]

"War is a Racket"
- by GEN Smedley Butler

Someone raised an interesting point on the news a while ago. How the hell are we even going to get out of there? We can't even secure the route from the green zone to the airport. Choppers are dropping like flies. Even the occasional transport plane.
I would not put such an evil plot such as fomenting strife between the Shiia and Sunni past the Bush administration. As far as I'm concerned they are more corrupt than the Reagan admin. It's not even like they are going to kill each other off, that is absurd. It will however displace mass amounts of people and further destabilize the region (as if we need that). I still believe Iraq can be fixed, I just don't think Bush is willing to do what it takes. As long as he's collecting money he doesn't care, think about it, defense contractors make money off war, they don't care if it never ends, the price of oil has been skyrocketing because of it's scarcity.... they are rich, they do not care. The only thing that's going to stop the war is if A) We get a Democratic president, or B) China stops subsidizing our debt and wreckless ventures (which they have already begun shifting in that direction).

[Dawood]

so dawood - and i'm not trying to pick a fight - was Saddam not a Sunni because he was secular or because of his violent attacks on other Muslims?

Actually, the scholars of Islam expelled him from the fold of Islam because he was secular
,also because he denied parts of the quran and held communist beleifs.
His violent attacks on other muslims are all just a part of what he contained inside coming out. A persons actions derive from what he has in his heart and if he loved the sunnah of the prophet, he wouldve never embraced secularism , nor would he have attacked muslms and oppressed people in general.

[russell jones]

Actually, the scholars of Islam expelled him from the fold of Islam because he was secular
,also because he denied parts of the quran and held communist beleifs.
His violent attacks on other muslims are all just a part of what he contained inside coming out. A persons actions derive from what he has in his heart and if he loved the sunnah of the prophet, he wouldve never embraced secularism , nor would he have attacked muslms and oppressed people in general.

Why is communism against the Koran? Communism is not inherently atheist or non-religious in any way.

[Theo.Huxtable]

karl marx, the godfather of communism -- didn't he also state that religions were set up by governments to control the masses?

[russell jones]

More or less, but Marxism isn't the only way that a socialist ideal could be expressed. There are definitely Christian socialists, in other words.

[tellurian]

I just found out today that the democrats in congress do in fact control the pursestrings on this war BUT they are looking for a way to continue funding it while posturing as anti-war. Fucking sell outs, I should have figured.
Marx may have been anti-religious, socialism is not necessarily anti-religious. The problem with socialism from the start is that it was authoritarian some more so than others. I'm not really sure if Lenin was antireligious, but he was probably the kindest(? tolerant? open? accepting?) of the classical theorists. Stalin on the other hand was surely some kind of antireligious zealot.
You have to remember that these thinkers were riding high on the wave of the enlightenment (when science officially debunked religion) and atheism was very much en vogue.

[zewlanski]

wheres mize????????????

[QuEaZy]

not 100% but if u do watch tv for iraq info,forget it if u think u know what even know what happens in your own country.

there are american with english,australian,canadian and some other troops invading it,building bunkers and military bases,killing anyone who disapproves their idea.
so called sunni muslims fight the invaders and shia killing squads not civilians.
shias take part of the government and police killing sunnis civilians for payback from saddam.
and much more that we dont know,the thing is america is not winning anything,and the iraqis are resisting.

peace


dude what the fuck are you talking about, where do you get this shit from. All that shows is that you just jump on the media hype.

Listen this whole sunni shiate thing is bullshit. All it is is a sunni political leader and a shiate political leader disagreeing and using the tribes as a catalyst for the media. 80% of the iraqi people are a mix between sunni and shiate heritage.
The iraqi people arent resisting anything, the resistors are insurgents and terrorist and half of them arent even iraqi. the highest death toll in iraq are insurgents killing civilians. they have killed more iraqi amy and iraqi police than coalition military,
The terrorist publish their own newspapers, websites and news channels making stories that americans are killing civilians in order to bring them against the americans.
no one its getting payback for saddam. once he was captured he was not a factor. even those who worked for him were happy because they found it as an oppurtunity for them to prospur.
And as for the iraqi people wanting america here. the everyday people dont want us here but they understand that it is better for them. And the government does want us here because as long us america is here they make money.

I could be wrong but im in iraq at this moment and see what happens here and how it transpires on the news, on the internet, and its all about the story. the better the story the better the money for the publicist.

[MayorMeanBeans]

okay first of all, i propose (of course it wont happen) that you all start citing your shit like in school, even a website that is slightly reputable (ie juan fuentes) where you got your shit from. with politics, shit your boss said just doesnt cut it. regarding the budget, bush proposed 2.9 trillion, when broken down, gives 830-something billion to the military, the most since 1952, when china was fucking us up in korea while at the same time building nukes in the cold war.

next, you all talk a lot of shit (granted it is warranted). what would you propose that is actually feasible? im about to break down some options i see, lets see who talks shit.

1.Iraq-
- Give up our reservations about Iranian nukes and sanctionsin exchange for support on the border and a withdrawl of iranian agents from iraq. sounds feasible enough, fuentes among others believe that the shia deathsquads/iraqi govt are the two worst threats to iraq right now. but wait. who would that piss off?
-israel- for one (remember when they blew up iraqs reactors in 1982). when they go after irans reactors (which they will, and they know we wont withdraw our aid), do you really think that iran is gonna believe under the circumstances that we didnt play a role. even if we are legitimately uninvolved (questionable but maintainable), do you really think iran is gonna respect their part of the agreement? hellll no.
-europe- ahmedinejad, a largely ceremonial president (spokesman, not much more in terms of foreign affairs), has taken it upon himself to piss off the entire western world with his 'anti-zionist' remarks (most rational westerners call holocaust marginalizing 'anti-semitism' because it claims that such horrors are somehow not a big deal.)
-saudi arabia- ohh the guys that are in control of our white house (fuentes would probably know more about this oil conspiracy than i). fact of the matter is, that population explosion in iran terrifies the Sunni states. we already pay whatever the fuck in gas prices, and the Saudis for sure know what average americans care more about: their gas.
- Along a similar line, we can also bring Syria into the fold. Theyre already weak, the son aint the father by any means. Set them up with Israel, give them a little less than what they want, but do give them something of the Golan Heights so that they can at least 'wash their feet in that lake'. Make them feel important for once on our terms so they dont have to mix in others problems. Give them an incentive to shut down the iraqi border
- But wait- what about Lebanon? Hezbollah? Ohhh, you all forgot about all that smuggling that goes on over there, who do you think really benefits from it? what type of industries does syria have (no oil fellas)? yet they have a strong, LOYAL, military? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... i wonder.

but why dont we pull out you might wonder?? enough american lives have died. its soo expensive (i in no way am undermining the sacrifices, me like most of you know people closely connected to iraq).

1. who is going to protect the sunnis when we pull out and we got bosnia 2008? the saudis. once the saudis come in, who claims unfair advantage and also enters? iran. is a localized insurgency really worse then all three oil superpowers embroiled in conflict? wow thats so cinical to think of that way... i hear you fuentes. but follow the money my dude- weapons weapons weapons. remember lebanon 1982 (sharon fucking shit up)? the middle east has a tragic tendency to jump into others fights (legacies of pan arabism, now pan-islam). ask yourself, is iraq vs iraq really worse then us pulling out and its iraq vs iraq vs iran vs syria vs saudi with european weapons with iraqi civilians being a new palestinian diaspora then they get assaulted in australia on the beach? generalizations maybe.

now ive been talking shit about your guys proposals the whole time without saying what i would do. so hear i go:

1. solve that palestinian problem- how can we expect the middle east to help us when we ignore their number one political question of modern times?

2. divide the iraqi army training- since their hopelessly untrained and their loyalty questionable, why are we still hoping that theyll forget their identities and just be iraqi? i say slow it down. half the time they are training militarily. but the other half, put them in reconstruction. dont make them tools of the americans/badr militias (as they are perceived now), rather help them rebuild what is iraqi.

3.for domestic politics, get the halliburtons out so that fuentes stops his genius theorizing.

4. once the palestinian stuff has been solved with our direct involvement, well have some diplomatic capital. if we can bring syria into the fold, we get border security. al qaeda in iraq will lose their main supply line (al qaeda and iran definitely do not get along).

5. return to a federalist structure with significant autonomy for different provinces. no one (except for those kurds) wants an india/pakistan thing going on.

6. hold new elections. the sunnis boycotted because they werent trustful of the new system. is that their fault that they were right in thinking the govt wouldnt benefit them? change the system to the electoral college like the states, so that the sunnis at least have a sizeable coalition such as the quebec bloc in canada.

[Juan Fuentes]

dude what the fuck are you talking about, where do you get this shit from. All that shows is that you just jump on the media hype.

Listen this whole sunni shiate thing is bullshit. All it is is a sunni political leader and a shiate political leader disagreeing and using the tribes as a catalyst for the media. 80% of the iraqi people are a mix between sunni and shiate heritage.
The iraqi people arent resisting anything, the resistors are insurgents and terrorist and half of them arent even iraqi. the highest death toll in iraq are insurgents killing civilians. they have killed more iraqi amy and iraqi police than coalition military,
The terrorist publish their own newspapers, websites and news channels making stories that americans are killing civilians in order to bring them against the americans.
no one its getting payback for saddam. once he was captured he was not a factor. even those who worked for him were happy because they found it as an oppurtunity for them to prospur.
And as for the iraqi people wanting america here. the everyday people dont want us here but they understand that it is better for them. And the government does want us here because as long us america is here they make money.

I could be wrong but im in iraq at this moment and see what happens here and how it transpires on the news, on the internet, and its all about the story. the better the story the better the money for the publicist.

you said it queezy,you could be wrong

that guy sadr,shiite dude,its a supporter of the prime minister,and the shia are in control of the police,go check it out if u dont believe me.
making iraq better! gime a break!

peace

[WorldBench]

IRAQ was a bLASt

i had so much fun when i was there. man getting rocketed by 9ft tall rockets landing 50m from you, and 120mm mortars landing next to your truck, it was like an adults playground!

140 degree heat and guarding iraqi's who are pulling hard labor.. fucking CO and CSM making us wear full battle rattle, fuck all that.

I talked to alot of Iraqi's they don't hate Americans, they hate us Occupying their country. How would you feel if they took over America. They like Saddam cause they were safer. Shit Now theyre more likely to die.

Eh oh well
Who Cares, we can't do shit about this...
Politics don't listen to anyone but who pays them

Gotta love lobbyists and policians

[russell jones]

I just found out today that the democrats in congress do in fact control the pursestrings on this war BUT they are looking for a way to continue funding it while posturing as anti-war. Fucking sell outs, I should have figured.
Marx may have been anti-religious, socialism is not necessarily anti-religious. The problem with socialism from the start is that it was authoritarian some more so than others. I'm not really sure if Lenin was antireligious, but he was probably the kindest(? tolerant? open? accepting?) of the classical theorists. Stalin on the other hand was surely some kind of antireligious zealot.
You have to remember that these thinkers were riding high on the wave of the enlightenment (when science officially debunked religion) and atheism was very much en vogue.

Lenin was ruthless and authoritarian, he just didn't last long enough to turn into a paranoid egomaniac like Stalin did. Trotsky was the best among that group.

[AbovE]

this shit is too funny..................all I want is a confirmed kill.

[QuEaZy]

dont we all

[stunt double]

Denmark, Lithuania and Britain are pulling troops out of Iraq.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070222.BRITAIN22/TPStory/TPInternational/Africa/

[AbovE]

naturally

[Graff.King.Baller]

PRO BUSH!!! hes such a pimp, i bet hillary bush is his bitch an thats why dey married.

[stunt double]

i cant tell if graff.king.baller is serious or a joke, either way. he's hilarious.

[russell jones]

obligatory photoshopped bush picture

http://sensiblyeclectic.com/b2evolution/blogs/media/bush_pimp.jpg

[Theo.Huxtable]

8 KILLED IN SUICIDE ATTACK ON PARLIAMENT BUILDING INSIDE BAGHDAD'S FORTIFIED GREEN ZONE; BRIDGE ACROSS TIGRIS RIVER ALSO DESTROYED

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The suicide attack on Iraq's parliament on Thursday has killed eight and wounded 20, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

After the attack in the building's cafeteria, more explosives were found near the parliament room and were destroyed in a controlled detonation, according to Iraqi lawmaker Iman al-Asadi.

It is unclear how the bomber was able to pass through the multiple security checkpoints required to enter the parliament building, which is in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

The Associated Press, citing Mohammed Abu Bakr, the parliament's media relations chief, said some security procedures had changed earlier in the day at a Green Zone entrance near the parliament building.

The entrance's security scanner was not working, Abu Bakr told the AP, and pedestrians entering the zone were subject to hand searches and passed through metal detectors, he said.

The slain lawmakers include a Shiite, whose identity has not been released, and a Sunni, Mohammed Hassan Awadh, a member of the National Dialogue bloc, according to Muhanned Jabbar, an official with the office of Iraq's speaker of parliament.

Three lawmakers were among those wounded, Jabbar said.

The parliamentary speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, has called for an emergency session on Friday at 11 a.m. to show that lawmakers will not be deterred by the attack, Jabbar said.

The explosion happened around 2:30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. ET) as parliament members headed to the cafeteria following Thursday's session, al-Asadi said. Al-Asadi said he did not go to the cafeteria and headed to the legal department, where he heard a loud explosion from inside the restaurant.

Lawmakers and everyone inside the building -- which once served as Baghdad's convention center -- were immediately put in lockdown as a precaution following the explosion.

In addition to parliament, the center also houses Iraqi government offices.

There were no American casualties in the blast, according to U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington.

The Green Zone, a four-square-mile area in Baghdad, is the seat of the U.S. military and U.S. diplomatic agencies, as well as the site of the Iraqi government and parliament. It is also known as the International Zone.

Security inside the Green Zone has been compromised in recent weeks, prompting the U.S. Defense Department to recently require all personnel to wear body armor and helmets when outside buildings in the Green Zone, a source there said.

On March 22, two mortar rounds struck inside the Green Zone during a live news conference, causing visiting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to duck in surprise.

On March 27, a U.S. soldier and American contractor were killed and five people were wounded when a rocket landed in the Green Zone.

Two unexploded suicide vests were found inside the Green Zone on March 31.

Truck bomb brings down bridge
A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in northern Baghdad Thursday morning, sending cars into the Tigris River and killing at least 10 people and wounding 26 others, according to an Iraqi Interior Ministry official..

Video of the scene showed two large sections in the middle of al-Sarafiya bridge collapsed into the river.

The al-Sarafiya bridge connected the predominantly Sunni Adhamiya neighborhood and Bab al-Muadham, a mixed district.

The iron bridge, one of Baghdad's oldest, was built by British forces in 1946.

U.S. military: Iran trains insurgents
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Wednesday that Iraqi insurgents are being trained in Iran to assemble weapons and Iranian-made weapons are still turning up in Iraq.

The statement comes two months after the United States said it had asked Tehran to stop the flow of weapons into Iraq.

Coalition forces found a cache of Iranian rockets and grenade launchers in Baghdad on Tuesday, spokesman U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said Wednesday.

"The death and violence in Iraq are bad enough without this outside interference," Caldwell said. "Iran and all of Iraq's neighbors really need to respect Iraq's sovereignty and allow the people of this country the time and the space to choose their own future."

February, Caldwell said the United States had asked Iran to stop the transfer of weapons. (Watch why the U.S. is blaming Iran and Syria)

President Bush has said a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force is behind the supply of Iranian weapons. Tehran has denied interfering in Iraq.

Caldwell also said Wednesday that two militants who were recently detained said they had received training in Syria, another nation the Bush administration has accused of meddling in the region.

Munitions from Iran were found in a black Mercedes sedan in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood on Tuesday after a tip from a civilian, Caldwell said. An Iranian-made rocket was found in the back seat and Iranian weapons were found in the trunk and around a nearby house, he said.

In an unusual development, he said coalition forces have found evidence that Sunni insurgents in Iraq received help from intelligence services in the Shiite nation of Iran.

Pentagon extends Army tours
The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the standard yearlong tour of duty for U.S. Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan has been extended to 15 months to meet targets for troop buildup. (Full story)

The tour extension, announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is intended to make tours more predictable and avoid the situation of giving troops little advance notice they will have to stay. (Watch military commanders explain the extensions)

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq, Carolina Sanchez and Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.

[Chief Wiggum]

Irak will never, never be in peace and have a real democracy. At least for the 20 next years.

[Larry Pubes]

in 20yrs iraq will be a radioactive desert of death.

[Dawood]

sad because Iraq is the cradle of civilization and look what these barbarians are doing to it.

[Theo.Huxtable]

i bumped the iraq thread, since i'd like to re-ignite the iraq discussion. if you guys could chime in on that thread please do -- namely about the recent bombing inside the parliament in the "fortified" green zone, and the bombing that destroyed a road bridge in baghdad on the tigris.

although i'm not really surprised about the parliament bombing, i am impressed. despite the u.s.'s "troop surge," bombings seem to be getting more sophistacated and provocative. supposedly "al qaeda in iraq" has claimed responsibility. not only did they penetrate the green zone, but they hit its heart.

[Juan Fuentes]

in 20yrs iraq will be a radioactive desert of death.

thats true,babies of american veterans and iraqi babies are coming out all deformed because of the uranium used in this massacre.......

[yumone]

actually thats uranium from the first gulf war homie

[Juan Fuentes]

u telling me they dont use uranium now? go do your research homie

[Larry Pubes]

yo homies, go hit da bookz 'n' shit yooo

[Dawood]

uranium (http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm)

[yumone]

u telling me they dont use uranium now? go do your research homie

no thats not what i'm saying, what i'm saying is the only documented evidence of genetic mutation in children that i have seen has been in the context of depleted uranium used in the first gulf war. I'm sure in ten years there will be a new batch of deformities and sickness because of the uranium they're using at the moment.

If i'm wrong please supply me with a link which shows the effects of uranium that was used in the current iraq war and i will be more enlightened on the matter.

[SPORTO]

UNBAISED FACT BASED DOCUMENTERY


GANGS OF IRAQ


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gangsofiraq/view/

[Juan Fuentes]

yumone
the internet is a blessing,use it and use it good,get the info and see if you can believe it or not,the saying "the truth shall set you free" its not a religious fairy tale.
GOOGLE it? uranium in iraq?
YOUTUBE IT? even better,images,like a book with pics,more interesting right?(tons of vids)



A BONUS...
IRAQI VETS ARRESTED FOR BEING IN PENTAGON AND PROTESTING ABOUT IT. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaaeCwfwKqs)

peace

[Juan Fuentes]

U.S. Gov. Lies to American People and the Troops (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og_m48LWkR8)

[Juan Fuentes]

it is well known iraq has nothing to do with 911(for the sane),yet neocons wanted to invade iraq and what a coincidence one of the PNAC guys,on sep12 2001 mentioned iraq can be behind it...


PNAC James Woolsey thumbed Iraq on the night of 9/11 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVde1RhG5Jw)

[Juan Fuentes]

US occupiers complicit in Sammara blast (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2007/150607complicit.htm)

they know and they talk about it,but it doesnt show on the news....

[MayorMeanBeans]

fuentes i posted this in the gaza thread, check it out:

fuentes you should be careful with that website. i looked at a couple other stories, and they're fairly inaccurate. for example:

http://infowars.net/articles/june2007/150607complicit.htm

US occupiers complicit in Sammara blast Press TV (http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=13186&sectionid=351020101)
Friday June 15, 2007
http://prisonplanet.com/Pictures/june07/150607Ayatollah.jpg Related: Iraqis Accuse U.S. Of Bombing Shrine (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2007/130607Shrine.htm)
Related: U.S. official: Samarra attack may have been inside job (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2007/140607inside.htm)
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution has said the bombing of the holy Shia shrines in Samarra is aimed at provoking sectarian violence.
In a message on the recent bombing of the shrines of the two revered Shia Imams in the Iraqi town of Samarra, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei blamed the intelligence services of the Zionist regime and the occupation forces in Iraq for the bombing, saying such terrorist acts are meant to intensify sectarian violence in the Muslim world.
The Leader urged the Muslims particularly the Iraqi people to remain vigilant in the face of the plots hatched to create sectarian strife between Shias and Sunnis.
He noted the holy shrines of the two revered Shia Imams in the Sunni town of Samarra, had been respected throughout history, whereas the recent event marks the second desecration of these holy sites since the invasion of Iraq by foreign troops.

So that's his article. I regularly frequent the blog of Juan Cole, who is widely respected as one of the preeminent scholars on Iraq. These were his reactions:

An Iranian embassy official in Baghdad admitted that the Samarra attack (http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=13039&sectionid=351020101) was probably the work of the Iraqi Baath Party. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad had blamed the US, while the US fingered "al-Qaeda." The Baathists are the best candidate. Samarra is a Sunni Arab city with a strong Baath cell, and the Baathists are secularists who have a history of being willing to shell religious edifices for political reasons (e.g. attacks on Najaf in spring 1991). My readers who like conspiracy theorists should pay attention to this story; an Iranian observer in Baghdad would likely have some intelligence on this matter. In the first Sawt al-Iraq story cited above, Iraqi Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashimi also implicitly blamed the Baathists ( http://www.juancole.com/ ).

Iran's Supreme Jurisprudent,Ali Khamenei, managed to blame the Iraqi Baath Party, the Wahhabi sect of Islam, the Salafi Jihadi radicals among Sunnis, and the United States (http://www2.irna.com/en/news/view/line-24/0706149816235637.htm), jointly for the blowing up of the minarets at the al-Askariya Shrine in Samarra. The shrine is among the holiest sites for the Shiite branch of Islam. Iran is the largest Shiite country, with 90% or so of its 70 million people adhering to it. Khamenei is both the head of the Iranian state and the head of Iranian Shiism, and is recognized as authoritative by some Shiites outside Iran, especially the Hizbullah Party of south Lebanon. Most non-Iranian Shiites follow instead Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf, who has called for calm. But Khamenei has a big megaphone among Shiites. His laying of responsibility for the bombing at the feet of the US will increase anti-American hatred in the Shiite world. Khamenei's heated and irrational rhetoric, positing a vast conspiracy among various groups that hate one another, is typical of the hardliners in Iran, but it is my impression that in recent months he has tended to leave the wilder talk to his rival Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi and his protege, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. I don't think Khamenei's remarks on this matter are a good sign."

It's not so simple as to entitle their article "US complicit in attack."

Mayor "Better journalism oner" Menino.

[Theo.Huxtable]

^just a case of muslims unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions. too shamed to admit that muslims are becoming their own undoing. similar to how arabs claimed 9/11 wasn't done by arabs, but by israeli jews. the same infighting is going on right now between fatah and hamas in gaza and the west bank.

[Sleeping Pills]

nuking is the answer

[Mellow]

yeah, the war is fucked

[Dawood]

nuking is the answer

nuke you, punk

[CALIgula]

the same infighting is going on right now between fatah and hamas in gaza and the west bank.

....its crazy out there...the way hamas was parading fatah out in the streets like that.

[Juan Fuentes]

nuke is the answer...drink some plutonium and do the world a favor

[MayorMeanBeans]

^ fuentes why no response? i'd be interested in a dialogue....

[Sleeping Pills]

i was kidding.

[Juan Fuentes]

what response?, u didnt ask me anything....maybe about what u did with what i posted,if thats the case,cool,do it,i like to post the source and people go check it out themselves

[MayorMeanBeans]

No fuentes, your posting inaccurate news stories, i posted refutations of what you wrote, and i guess i expected a defense of sorts. thats all.

[lord_casek]

there was a rape video, too (abu ghraib_
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/18/1954193.htm

[pranks]

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x43/retsknarp143.jpg

[MayorMeanBeans]

"Muqtada al-Sadr has alleged that the entire point of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was to keep this decadent situation in place and to forestall the coming of the Mahdi by planting military bases around Iraq and the Persian Gulf. He says that the US Pentagon has an enormous file on the Mahdi.

In other words, the US and militant Sunni Arabs are felt by many Iraqi Shiites to be playing the role of Dajjal or "Anti-Christ", a figure whose purpose is to forestall the coming of the Imam Mahdi. Shiite tradition holds that the Mahdi will come together with the Return of Christ, and that the returned Christ will kill the Dajjal."

- i quoted www.juancole.com . this is a aspect of the conflict i never even contemplated. from a political standpoint, its pretty clever on al-sadr's part. he puts us in a corner in which we are completely out of our element, we have no way to "defend" ourself to accusations of being the Dajjal. Dawood, i know your sunni, and i know its real ignorant to ask you, but do you know anything about this?

furthermore, how can the us really go on record saying, "were not anti-christs, don't worry." this other-worldliness is something that we are bound to lose propaganda wise.

anyways, lets debate what the average iraqi says today, that "al qaida and americans are teaming up to hold the shiites down. since the us controls the security, and al qaida got past the security, THEREFORE, they have to be working together, right?" discuss.

[Juan Fuentes]

enormous file on the mahdi hahaaaa! yeah right,that fat scum wants to worsen the tentions between both sects.
like always taitors help the imperialism(their globalization) succeed in foreing lands,it happened in all over the globe.



abu ghraib...gitmo....and the ones we dont know! where thousands of innocent men are being tortured by the sad weak nerd devils that the powerful liders put there to do that.

[Dawood]

First of all, there were no Shi'ites during the time of the prophet Muhammad, therefore their ideology and beleifs are something new to islam. The Shi'ites have their own "Mahdi" that they beleive is the one the prophet Muhammad spoke about, but the evidences show that this is not that time and that there are more things that need to come before the Mahdi emerges.
The Shi'ites are like any other group there, fighting for power and leverage at this point.
I don't think that the American govt. beleives in the Mahdi, I do beleive that the American govt. beleives in conquering the islamic ideology so that it can continue in it's imperialist endeavors throughout that region and others.

Also, the Dajjal is one person, not a whole group or nation. THe Dajjal is like the equivalent to the anti-christ in christianity. We have to rememebr that Islam, Judaism Christianity all have common teachings because they were all originally Islam at one point before the men of those respective religions changed the teacings.
The american govt. may be helping pave the way for the dajjal, but many people misunderstand what the dajjal is.

[Dawood]

more on the dajjal (http://etori.tripod.com/dajjalsystem/protection.html)

[Dawood]

Christian & Jewish Beliefs Regarding The Return Of The Messiah and Plots Against Masjid Al-Aqsa (http://www.islaam.com/Article.aspx?id=504)

[toke_wdc]

i think bush is just a spoiled little kid who has to get what he wants....it was actually kind of funny when everyone found out that the US troops couldnt find osama after all of bushes orders...but 9/11 was still fucked up so i dont blame him

[yumone]

"O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are but friends of one another" [5:51].


so the quran teaches muslims not to be friends with people of other religions? That's not very nice.

[yumone]

In summary, the Jews have got everything ready before even the temple is built. But they cannot start building until they get a sign from God as they believe. This sign is a red cow that should fulfill the description mentioned in their book. This cow would be slaughtered and burned and its ashes would be used to 'purify' the people of Israel, for you see none can enter the temple without being purified, and the Jews believe that they all are impure now until they are cleaned by the cow's remains! Well this cow they claim was born in 1997. "The ritual slaughter of the red cow will take place three years after its birth; the count down to the great return of the Jews to their original place of worship, and the glad tidings of he coming of the savior, the Messiah. The attempt to accomplish this return will lead to an unforgettable beginning of the third millennium." (The Observer, 9/7/97)


hahaha i think that source you posted has been proven wrong by grandfather time dawood

[Juan Fuentes]

every religion(not the belief system religion,but the group of people religion a.k.a its members) has weakenesses,and one of the greatest ones is the waiting for someone to save them.

there is no verse in quran that talks about this so called mahdi,and says that jesus died of a natural death,and was nothing but a distinguished human being.

this idea makes them stop believing in themselves and wait for miracles instead.

[Theo.Huxtable]

Anyone hear senator Lugar's comments? He said that Bush's "troop surge" strategy wasn't working, and that it's time to bring troops home. This comes as a surpise to many, as Lugar is probably the top Republican senator, a conservative, was one of the most vocal proponents of the Iraq war.

In defense of Bush -- Lugar's comments are premature. It's been a few months since Bush announced a "troop surge", yes; of about 30,000 additional troops. But the troops were sent in slowly, brigade by brigade -- and only about a week and a half ago has the troop surge been completed with every brigade arriving. And only within the last few days have we begun to see the troop surge start taking effect -- with the recent massive operations in and around Baghdad of cutting off al Qaida and removing their sancturaries. It will take even longer before we see a lasting effect (less violence and killings per day).

So yeah, Lugar's comments that the "surge" is working is premature, given that the first operation from the "surge" troops only took place a few days ago. I think the old man is senile and his logic and reasoning is beginning to falter.

[Dawood]

"O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are but friends of one another" [5:51].


so the quran teaches muslims not to be friends with people of other religions? That's not very nice.


the defenition of a freind in Islam is someone who reminds you of Allah when you forget and who encourages you to do good when you're doing wrong. A non muslim would never remind me of my duties to Allah but a muslim would.
I have non muslim aquaintances, but not one of them ever reminded me to pray at the fixed time so i don't really consider them "freinds" per se.
I don't hate them, I don't wish them harm, in the contrary, I wish the best for them and hope for them eveything good that I hope for myself, but do I conseder them my close freinds? No. The brothers who I pray with are my true freinds.
Is there anything wrong with that?

[MayorMeanBeans]

Dawood thanks for that but i have a couple more questions- how does shia and sunni thought regarding the dajjal differ? isn't the 12th imam and the mahdi the same in shia, while sunnis dont accept the 12th imam cuz of their schism?

Huxtable i saw that, and i agree with you its a little premature. Then again though, this current operation in Baquba was designed as such that they wouldnt offer the leaders an escape route and leave the troops to fight, as in Fallujah. Yet now the general is saying "they filtered out at the beginning phase of the surge. it wasnt such a good idea for the surge, they knew we were coming." Furthermore, he is also saying that Iraqis arent able to hold American gains.

i know its premature, but the first operation does not seem to be going to plan. no capture/kills of the top leadership, it seems like a classic guerilla attempt where its limited resistance but no staying power for the standing army, americans are taking some serious casualties (of course its relative, compared to iraqis i dont even know why we talk about american casualties).

ive read reports of sunnis being real nervous about accepting charity from the iraqi army. this means either that 1. there are iraqis who are either Mesapotamian Al Qaeda, or are collaborators. or 2, they dont believe that the Americans are going to stay, and that they don't trust the Iraqi Army. Neither scenario implies military victory.

[Dawood]

Sunnis and Shia are different. There are too many different sects among them. Some of them are extreme and some of them are moderate. Islam forbids sectarianism, although the prophet Muhammad said it would happen.
I said that to say that the views of the shia differ, some of them are not even considered muslims by the majority of sunnis because of their heretical beleifs but that is a small minority of them. Most Shia blindly follow their imams and don't have much knowledge of the Texts in islam. Actually, all of the sects are like that now.

As for the the extreme shia in Iraq like Al Sadr and his posse, they beleive in a Mahdi that is intrepeted in a whole different way that mainstream Islam and the MAJORITY of muslims believe.

[SADDAM HUSSEIN]

took the playa out the game.. what did you think was gonna happen?

[Theo.Huxtable]

the defenition of a freind in Islam is someone who reminds you of Allah when you forget and who encourages you to do good when you're doing wrong. A non muslim would never remind me of my duties to Allah but a muslim would.
I have non muslim aquaintances, but not one of them ever reminded me to pray at the fixed time so i don't really consider them "freinds" per se.
I don't hate them, I don't wish them harm, in the contrary, I wish the best for them and hope for them eveything good that I hope for myself, but do I conseder them my close freinds? No. The brothers who I pray with are my true freinds.
Is there anything wrong with that?


sad, because in christianity nothing says to discriminate against non-christians in ways that you can never consider them a "friend." buddhism also follows this similar principle.

christianity and buddhism -- treat everyone/anyone as a "friend"

islam -- only treat muslims as "friends"?

i'm having a harder and harder time of not believing that there is something inherently deviant with islam, and that it's just a group of fanatical terrorist knuckleheads giving a negative image to all of islam. but i'll stick with latter belief. no disrespect, i try to be open-minded... but a lot of facets of islam makes having such a stance difficult.

[yumone]

I don't hate them, I don't wish them harm, in the contrary, I wish the best for them and hope for them eveything good that I hope for myself, but do I conseder them my close freinds? No. The brothers who I pray with are my true freinds.
Is there anything wrong with that?
apart from the spelling of the word friend I think it's pretty pathetic for a religion to tell you who your friends are and base it solely on their religion. For example you are allowed by the quran to be friends with mike tyson but not me, i feel left out...

[Theo.Huxtable]

i don't think muslims in the middle east consider "nation of islam" black muslims from the US to be real muslims.

but then again, many sunnis and shias don't consider each other's sects to be true islam. abu musab al-zarqawi considered shias to be just as "evil" as jews. so there ya go.

[aspeckt]

a friend of mine was a combat medic in baghdad and was deployed for a little over 14 months. he has to go back in a few months, this time he is being sent to iran. he doesn't want to go back at all, but he is a solider, so obviously he will.

he is also in the national guard honor service, and he does honor services as his job while he is home. we live in sacramento, ca. northern california, so he is all voer northern california and nevada. he will be the first to tell you that what we are doing has shown no progress and has no plausible moral reasoning behind it, yet he is still going to go back to the front lines as a combat medic in a few months here. he never really talks about his time deployed, and this is pretty much the 1st time i have ever heard him say anything regarding the war. we were talking about his job as an honor guard and such and he replied with something of this nature:

"all i can tell you is this; it is a shitty time to be overseas and young. I don't know what it is man, but the last 3 months I have done more funeral services for soliders KIA that are 19-21 than ever before. It is sickening, 5 times a week I am at a funeral where the person being honored wouldn't be allowed to drink on US soil. The rate I have been seeing of young soldiers KIA is increasing substantially every day"

[Mercer]

My Mom lives down near DC and works as a civilian for the Army Field Hospitals.
She organizes the medical personell doctors and supplies for deployment abroad .
She told me they have to keep special ordering pediatric equipment for
all the children who are hurt/killed over there. They never had such a need for this
special equipment for kids before, even during veitnam.

So finally all my boys (2 of them in crew) get back in one piece and I'm feelin good.
My cousin was married two weeks ago and her new husband was deployed last week.
This shits got to stop.

[Mercer]

ok, since everyone knows Bush went to Iraq on false pretenses and that the troops are there basically Murdering people to keep the show on the road. The Question is WHY? Why do you think such a dispicable thing has been done, The whole world knows the deceit and lies of the Bush administration, They know everyone knows, So Why? what's the plan? I have my own Ideas and suspicions, but I want to hear yours.

My feeling on motive is this. Distraction from the problems here are easier than fixing them.

[lord_casek]

this is odd and funny
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22056684-5001028,00.html

[Stereotype V.0002]

Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer, Ghureer

KUTAR, KUTAR!

Hieeya!, Hieeya!, LA HUA HIEEYA!

http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/

[NoeWhan]

http://www.nfowars.net:443/stream1.pls
http://www.nfowars.net:443/stream1.pls
http://www.nfowars.net:443/stream1.pls

The Iraq war... and much much more
More than before, soon to hit your shore
Feed the starving to the poor, thats what 'they' are for
Blood and gore, you have seen it before
But, right outside your door?

[Theo.Huxtable]

interesting article i found...

Enemies Unseen

By MARK KUKIS
Mon Jul 30, 2:00 PM ET



The five sport-utility vehicles sat abandoned in the darkness. A faint beeping sound signaled that their doors were open. Some of the Iraqi police who arrived at the scene initially feared going near the cars, thinking the sound meant they were rigged to explode. Finally a few ventured closer. In the back of two of the vehicles were the four Americans. One of them was alive, though barely. Handcuffed, he had been shot in the back of the head, but he was breathing. The other soldiers were already dead. One had taken bullets in both legs and his right hand, and at some point the kidnappers had torn open his body armor and fired bullets into his chest and torso. Two others were handcuffed together, with one's right hand joined to the other's left. Two shots in the face and neck had killed one. Four bullets in the chest had killed the other.


None of the soldiers had identification. The killers had taken everything from the men's pockets before fleeing the scene. In his last moments, one of the soldiers, a young lieutenant, realized his body might be unidentifiable when he was discovered. In the dust caked on one of the vehicles he managed to write his last name, Fritz, a final act before dying.


To many Americans, the Jan. 20 murder of four U.S. soldiers on a deserted road in southern Iraq might sound similar to countless other tragedies in a bloody, brutal war. There was a firefight, which killed another American; a brazen abduction; then a frantic chase leading to a heartless end. And yet from the start, the deaths of the five Americans were also shrouded in mystery. The attack took place in Karbala, a Shi'ite holy city of roughly 1 million people that had been one of the safest in Iraq for U.S. troops. It happened in plain sight of Iraqi police the Americans had been assigned to train. The killers wore U.S.-style uniforms, suggesting a catastrophic lapse of security --or the possibility that the enemy operation had actually been an inside job.


The military has struggled to affix responsibility for the Karbala murders. U.S. commanders have accused the Quds Force, a paramilitary organization run by members of Iran's security establishment, of being behind the operation. On July 2 in Baghdad, the military revealed it was holding Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese national who was captured in Basra in March. He is a senior operative of Hizballah (the Lebanese Shi'ite militia supported by the Quds Force), and officials say he has admitted to involvement in the attack.


U.S. officials, who met their Iranian counterparts in Baghdad on July 24, have used the Karbala killings as evidence that Iran is sponsoring attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. But the full story of what happened that night may be even more tangled and disturbing, raising questions about the loyalties of some of the Iraqis whom U.S. troops are risking their lives to protect and support. An internal Army investigation into the attack reviewed by TIME, in addition to interviews with U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, suggest that the abduction and murders were carried out with the knowledge and complicity of Iraqi Shi'ite police who only hours earlier had been working alongside U.S. soldiers--and may have involved local officials loyal to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Karbala incident highlights the dilemmas facing the U.S. as it weighs whether and how to redeploy its troops from the front lines of the war. In some cases, the Iraqi security forces being trained and equipped by the U.S. retain ties to anti-American militia who could turn on U.S. troops as they depart. (On July 13, U.S. troops killed six Iraqi police in a raid targeting a rogue police commander.)


That's particularly unnerving given the military's push to embed more U.S. troops with Iraqi units. In Baghdad today, U.S. and Iraqi forces serve together in 65 combat outposts, up from 10 in February. But U.S. troops never went back to work with the Iraqis in Karbala, where the trust and friendships forged over many months ended in one night of betrayal and murder.


Most of the soldiers from Forward Operating Base Iskan, just south of Baghdad, liked the missions to Karbala. It was a chance "to get away from the flagpole" and all the bureaucracy of life back at the main base. In Karbala, roughly 30 men were on their own for a week or so at a time, staying at the city's governance center, where the police headquarters sat next to the governor's office. The two-hour drive from Iskandariyah could be nerve-racking as they eyed the edges of the route for roadside bombs. But once at the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center, life was simple and good in the way soldiers like.


Much of the unit had come together in the early months of 2006 at Fort Richardson, an Army base just outside Anchorage, Alaska. Jacob Fritz had graduated from West Point in 2005. Built like a football lineman, Fritz had grown up a Nebraskan farm boy in the town of Verdon, where his graduating class in high school had only 11 students. At West Point, Fritz earned the nickname "Jolly Jake" for his perpetual smile. The soldiers from Fort Richardson grew to like Fritz too. He had the kind of résumé you see among the young élite of the Army's officer corps. But early on, the enlisted men considered Fritz one of their own.


Johnathan Chism was a young Army specialist with a thick accent from his native Baton Rouge, La. The other guys called him "Gator," and Chism listed his ethnicity on MySpace as Redneck/ Southern. Johnathon Millican, 20, a private from Alabama, also spoke in a thick Southern accent and was the unit's resident comedian. Private Shawn Falter was from upstate New York and enlisted in the military in 2005, following three older brothers who served in the Army and the Marines. He liked country music. On the weekend before he deployed to Iraq in 2006, Falter was out with Staff Sergeant Billy Wallace and some others, singing karaoke. For his turn at the microphone, Falter sang the words to the Tracy Lawrence ballad If I Don't Make It Back.


In Karbala, Fritz led some of the missions on his own. At other times, Captain Brian Freeman took the lead. Freeman was, in essence, the chief U.S. liaison to Iraqi officials in Karbala, including Governor Akil Mahmood Khareem and police chief Mohammed Muhsin Zeidan al-Quraishy. At 31, Freeman was older than most of the other troops. He had graduated from West Point in 1999, served his obligatory five years of active duty and then settled into civilian life in Temecula, Calif., where he had a wife, a year-old son and another child on the way. Freeman had left active duty but remained a member of the Individual Ready Reserve Unit, which keeps a number of trained soldiers ready to call for deployment if needed.


By late 2006, Freeman's work in Karbala seemed to be going well. The U.S. planned to leave the center entirely in the hands of the Iraqis by the spring of 2007. But Freeman was uneasy about the job . He was an armor officer, more used to dealing with tanks and cannons than Iraqi politicians. Yet in Karbala he was a civil-affairs official, doing work he felt was more for a diplomat than a soldier. Shortly before Christmas 2006, Freeman took a short leave to visit his family in California, making his way to Baghdad for a helicopter flight on the first leg of the journey. At Landing Zone Washington, the main helipad inside the Green Zone, Freeman spotted Senators John Kerry and Christopher Dodd, who were on a visit to Iraq. He introduced himself and began voicing some of his concerns. Freeman kept in touch with Dodd after they parted in Baghdad, reiterating his thoughts in an e-mail. "Senator, it's nuts over here," Freeman wrote. "Soldiers are being asked to do work we're not trained to do. I'm doing work that the State Department people are far more trained to do in fostering diplomacy. But they're not allowed to come off the bases because it's too dangerous here. It doesn't make any sense."


Freeman felt certain that the Iraqis he and his soldiers were supposed to be helping did not want them there. He and other troops suspected some of the police were members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of radical anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. That's not unusual, given that the largely Shi'ite personnel of Iraq's Ministry of Interior have long been seen as a de facto wing of the Mahdi Army. National police are suspected of taking part in the militia's sectarian killings in Baghdad. And in southern Iraq, where al-Sadr is powerful, infiltration of U.S.-trained Iraqi units is common. But even the wariest Americans have trouble believing that Iraqis who look them in the face each day could muster the audacity to try to kill them.


By early this year, Freeman was beginning to question the assignment. He was having trouble sleeping during his stays in Karbala. When he returned from leave in January, he asked his commanding officers if he could skip the Karbala mission heading out Jan. 14. He suggested doing some other long-term projects at the main base. Not doable, Freeman was told. The mission was heading out as scheduled, with him in command.


Many soldiers sensed a changed mood when they arrived at the Iraqi police headquarters in Karbala on Jan. 14. Some of the Iraqis the soldiers had been working with since the fall seemed unusually tense. One Iraqi police officer heckled some soldiers at the back gate in broken English, saying "U.S.A. bad, Iraq good" before throwing bread at them. Another aired an ominous warning. "Tomorrow," he said to soldiers standing guard outside, pounding a fist into his palm. "Tomorrow."


On Jan. 20, all except the guards posted at the back and front gates were at rest in the barracks area of the concrete headquarters building, where troops were scattered across two floors. At about 6 p.m., just as the sun was setting, a series of shots rang out, sounding much closer than the occasional gunfire heard in the area. Then two huge booms shook the ground from the inside. The soldiers scrambled into their armor and reached for their weapons. On the first floor of the main building, Wallace saw the door to the room he shared with Millican and three other soldiers open from the outside. Sergeant First Class Sean Bennett instinctively slammed it shut with his right shoulder. But the attacker in the hall still managed to cram the muzzle of an AK-47 into the doorjamb and let fly a stream of bullets. "The guy just opened up," says Wallace, who threw his left side against the door as the firing continued. "He started blasting all over the room the best he could."


Somewhere in the struggle, a grenade bounced into the room. Millican dived, catching bullets in his body as he went down and absorbed the explosion. He had been chatting online with his wife Shannon when the fighting broke out. A minute later, he was dead.


The explosions blew open an adjacent room where Freeman and Fritz worked. Then the door to Wallace's room flung open once more. Wallace looked up to see a man in the same desert-camouflage fatigues normally worn by Iraqi army soldiers; he was standing 2 ft. from him and taking aim with an AK-47. Wallace and Bennett threw their shoulders back into the door. The barrel caught in the crack a second time, and more bullets crashed around the side of the room. Seconds later, a massive explosion in the hall disintegrated the door around Wallace and Bennett, who was left badly wounded along with another soldier in the room, Jesse Hernandez. More blasts outside sent flames and smoke coursing through the darkening courtyard, where Falter and Chism had been standing guard. One of the humvees parked there was ablaze, and rounds from the turret gun began cooking off as the attackers rushed away.


As the troops tended to their wounded and waited for rescue helicopters to arrive, they realized Freeman, Fritz, Chism and Falter were missing. The attack had lasted just five minutes.

How did the attackers breach the base's security? A report from the military's investigation of the incident, a copy of which was obtained by TIME, says a convoy of eight sport-utility vehicles arrived at the outer gates of the complex shortly before the shooting started. The vehicles included a tan Suburban, a white Land Cruiser and a black Yukon. Inside the vehicles were at least eight men who wore American-style helmets and safety glasses, as well as some men wearing hoods in the way Iraqi interpreters working with U.S. forces sometimes do. According to the report, the Iraqi guards at the outer checkpoints put up no fight when the visitors ordered them, in English, to lay down their weapons and step aside.

Lieut. Nathan Diaz was in an upstairs room of the police headquarters with 18 other soldiers as the clash began. Like most of the other troops, Diaz initially thought the explosions were incoming mortars or rockets fired from insurgents outside the base. Diaz moved to the roof along with other soldiers and began shooting out lights around the courtyard so the troops would be harder to see if snipers were about. Diaz peered over the ledge into the courtyard just in time to see a humvee explode, sending up a shock wave that knocked him onto his back. Diaz and the other soldiers then decided to clear the roof, still thinking mortars were falling. Going downstairs, Diaz moved along the hall on the second floor where the police chief, al-Quraishy, and his two deputies, Ra'aid Shaker and Majed Hanoon, kept their offices. Soldiers called the chief's squad of personal bodyguards the "commandos." If there were any sign of trouble, the commandos would typically respond before the Iraqi police. But this time they barely moved as Diaz and other Americans rushed by. "I didn't really think much of it at the time, but very soon after, that became very strange," says Diaz, who came to believe that whoever was attacking the center had help from the inside.

After rescue helicopters had carried away Millican and three other wounded, Diaz confronted al-Quraishy, Shaker and Hanoon. How could this have happened? Al-Quraishy was supposed to be one of the best commanders the Iraqi security forces had. Nicknamed "the Wolf," he made a name for himself in Mosul in 2004 and '05, often appearing on an Iraqi true-crime television show called In the Hands of Justice, chasing down and personally interrogating militants. The Americans hoped al-Quraishy, who took over leadership of the Karbala police in the fall of 2006, could stand up to the Mahdi Army in southern Iraq. But Diaz and others believed that, at the least, some of al-Quraishy's police had let the Jan. 20 attackers into the main building without offering any resistance. During the fighting inside, none of the Iraqi police or the commandos did anything to help the Americans. "No one was shot," says Sergeant First Class Michael King, describing the Iraqi police immediately after the attack. "No one twisted an ankle. No one jammed a thumb. Nothing." Al-Quraishy was apologetic but offered no explanation. "You really can't tell with that guy," Diaz says. "Either he was sincere, or he's a great actor. It's really almost impossible to interpret."

The Karbala attack came days after the U.S.'s Jan. 11 arrest of five alleged Iranian operatives in Irbil, in northern Iraq. Military officials have theorized that the Karbala attack was orchestrated by Tehran in retaliation. But the U.S.'s initial probe of the incident found no evidence of direct Iranian involvement. Instead, the picture that emerged cast suspicion chiefly on senior Iraqi officials known to the Americans, as well as local thugs and associates of al-Sadr. The report on the investigation, which has been released only to the families of the soldiers who were killed, found that "it is too coincidental that the attackers, already argued as outside professionals, knew and raided only the two rooms where the Americans resided and were able to isolate the barracks-area soldiers and rooftop defenders." The report adds that many Iraqi police seemed to disappear moments before the assault and that the attackers seemed to know that the Americans would initially go to the rooftops during an attack, a drill U.S. troops had practiced in front of the senior Iraqi officers.

One source of dispute is whether the attackers were wearing U.S. uniforms, which Iraqi police claimed is the reason they didn't shoot. The man Wallace saw, however, was dressed in Iraqi army fatigues, which are sometimes worn by Iraqi police as well. "This all suggests that someone provided more than just a layout of the compound and knowledge of the Coalition Forces' battle drill," the report says. "It appears an inside assault force was pre-staged."

Since Jan. 20, the military has begun to identify militants thought to have taken part in the attack. On March 22, the U.S. military announced the arrest of Qais Khazali and his brother Laith, saying the two were apprehended in Basra and Hillah for allegedly playing a role in the Karbala attack. Khazali was a protégé of al-Sadr's in 2004 and '05, but his relationship to al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army is unclear these days. Investigators who questioned Khazali say he was working closely with the Iran-backed Quds Force before his capture and was leading a group of Shi'ite militants who trained in Iran. Khazali had traveled frequently to Iran for what appears to be weapons smuggling, U.S. military officials in Baghdad said. In May, U.S. forces killed Sheik Azhar al-Dulaimi after cornering him on a rooftop in Baghdad's Sadr City; investigators say they uncovered forensic evidence that shows al-Dulaimi was among the men who abandoned the vehicles used in the operation. On July 2 in Baghdad, the military revealed the capture of Ali Musa Daqduq, the purported Hizballah operative. "Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds Force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers," says Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

But is that the full story? The gunmen who arrived at the Karbala center were obviously skilled guerrillas, and it is certainly possible that some among them had come from as far away as Lebanon or Iran. But that does not explain whether any of the Iraqi officers at the center knew the killers were coming or whether any joined the attack or helped the kidnappers get away. The Americans interviewed by TIME say at least some Iraqi police at the center were involved, and the conclusions of the military investigation support that view. But neither U.S. nor Iraqi authorities have brought charges against any Iraqi police present at the time of the ambush.

Questions also remain about whether Iraqi politicians had prior knowledge of the attack. Lieut. Colonel Robert Balcavage, ground commander of U.S. forces operating in Karbala and surrounding areas, says Khareem, the governor of Karbala, knew many details very soon after the attack that night, which made Balcavage wonder if he knew of the operation beforehand. The Army investigation cites unconfirmed reports of calls from the governor's office to the outer checkpoints as the attackers were approaching, with orders to let them pass. In an interview, Khareem denied any wrongdoing. "To accuse me of involvement in this attack is to slight me," Khareem says. "Before anybody accuses me, they should have solid evidence. No charges have been brought against me, by any Iraqi or by the American side, so there's nothing to discuss."

Two investigators who worked on the case say there is enough evidence against the governor and others at the Karbala center to fill an indictment that would pass muster in a U.S. court. A female member of the Iraqi parliament from Babil province, Majada Discher, is suspected of involvement too. One of the vehicles used by the attackers was registered to her, and investigators say forensic evidence shows that one of her bodyguards was among the killers. In Karbala, Army investigators drew up two lists of suspects. The first list, comprising about 40 names, read like a Who's Who of local Shi'ite militants, mostly from the Mahdi Army. The second list has roughly 10 names of people the investigators dubbed "untouchables." These were people thought to be involved in the plot one way or another but considered too prominent to arrest or target, investigators said. Discher made the untouchables list, as did the governor, al-Quraishy, Shaker and Hanoon.

Though Balcavage feels that arrests are in order, the case has stalled. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, who was a senior commander for southern Iraq at the time of the attack, says several Iraqi government officials remain under suspicion. "We haven't given up on this at all," he says. But Balcavage says political calculations can sometimes override the quest for justice. Removing a suspect police chief, for instance, could undo progress made in building up security forces and destabilize the local political leadership. "There's always second- and third-order effects for every action," Balcavage says. "The challenge is that you're working with a government you want to see succeed. But our values and the values of certain members of the government are not necessarily consistent. Our idea of good and their idea of good are not always the same."

As a result, working with Iraqi security forces and their leaders is becoming increasingly hazardous for many Americans in Iraq. Diaz, for example, sometimes still works with Hanoon, who was heard laughing into his cell phone the night of the Karbala attack. Hanoon is now the police chief of Iskandariyah. Diaz says his soldiers assume that Mahdi Army operatives are in their midst whenever they visit Hanoon, who works not far from the U.S. base at which pictures of the five Americans hang on a wall dedicated to the fallen.

When Iraqi authorities discovered the abandoned vehicles on the night of Jan. 20, Freeman was the soldier clinging to life. For a moment before the Americans finally arrived, the Iraqis thought Freeman might still have a chance. They could have waited for U.S. soldiers to come, but Freeman needed care immediately. So the Iraqis acted on their own. They pulled Freeman from the back of the vehicle and loaded him into an ambulance. An Iraqi army soldier administered CPR until a medic could give him oxygen as they rushed to the nearest hospital in Hillah. But Freeman's wound was too severe, and he died along the way.

"I would like to tell the family that we tried to help him so that he would live," the Iraqi soldier later told U.S. investigators who took a statement from him. "We are very sorry that he died. We treated him as if he was our own."

Copyright © 2007 Time Inc.

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

[Theo.Huxtable]

wow look what hypocrite dick cheney said in 1994 about thinking a US invasion of Iraq would be a mistake and would lead to quagmire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

but what's baffling is that he is aware of all this, yet was probably the biggest proponent for invading iraq.

[El Mamerro]

Bump, with some happy stuff for a change (OMG IS PROPAGANDA LOLZ):




Fulfilling part of a promise: a new home
Mar 31, 2008 - 04:05:04 CDT


WEST FARGO (AP) - A woman and her seven children have a new house as part of a promise made to her husband, who was killed in Iraq after he helped American soldiers.

Two North Dakota National Guard soldiers stood Saturday in the newly built Habitat for Humanity house beside Fatima Ali, the Iraqi woman they call "Mrs. M." Each put a hand to the wall in a blessing.

Mrs. M's husband, Majid Ali, had invited the North Dakota soldiers into his home in north-central Iraq and provided them with lifesaving information about roadside explosives planted by Iraqi insurgents.

"This family here saved American lives," Sgt. 1st Class Shayne Beckert said, choking up Saturday as he looked at the children. "If it hadn't been for their father, there would have been more parents in North Dakota with hurt in their hearts."

Members of the North Dakota National Guard's 141st Engineer Combat Battalion were on hand three years ago to greet Mrs. M and her children when they arrived in Fargo.

"My children have lost their father," she said. "But I think they will find they have many fathers here."

The North Dakota soldiers had arrived in Iraq in early 2004. Capt. Grant Wilz's platoon of B Company was deployed near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown and a hotspot in the growing insurgency. Its primary assignment was to clear roads of roadside bombs.

The bombs killed two members of B Company: Sgt. Lance Koenig, 33, Fargo, and Specialist Phil Brown, 21, Jamestown. In all, the 141st lost four men in Iraq.

Wilz's platoon was on patrol one day when it happened upon an Iraqi man whose truck had broken down. The Americans searched Majid Ali, grilled him about a weapon they found, and soon were sitting down to supper in his house.

"He was one of the few people you meet in your life you immediately like," Beckert said. "When we showed up, he'd fly out of the house and give us big hugs."

The house was near the soldier's regular patrol route, Wilz said. "The whole patrol would stop in and visit. We'd set up security, provide them with some food and water. Some of the soldiers played soccer with the kids," he said.

When their new friend began providing them with intelligence about where insurgents were placing bombs, they called him Mr. M in reports and conversation, hoping to protect him. But he was pulled from his truck and shot 30 times in the arms, legs, chest and head as his 11-year-old son was made to watch.

The boy said he was told, "This is what happens when you help the Americans."

The soldiers had told Majid Ali to be careful. They worried about him. He smiled and dismissed the warnings, they said, and asked only one thing: "If something happens to me, take care of my family."

Lutheran Social Services sponsored the family and, with other agencies, helped with housing, education and employment. Materials and labor for the house were donated. The soldiers organized fundraisers in Fargo and Bismarck, where Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., and Gov. John Hoeven grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and helped to raise $100,000.

Habitat for Humanity officials said they bent or broke some rules to build the family's house, a twin home with Mrs. M's brother, Ali Alkaabi, who had come to the U.S. years earlier, and his family occupying the other half.

The family has adjusted to snow and cold. Mrs. M is working, cleaning houses.

"The whole family is learning English, and the kids are doing well in school," Pomeroy said Saturday.

"Today is a triumph of spirit," Hoeven said.

One of the children, Nour, 15, talked about being on the track team at school, enjoying math and science and planning to become a doctor.

"It's nice here," she said. "It's safe."

Zuher, 13, showed off his room, painted a bright green he picked to match the green uniforms of the Iraqi national soccer team. He also has a new University of North Dakota hockey jersey.

"When I go to college," he said, "I'll play for the Sioux."





http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2008/03/31/news/state/152281.txt

[Bonjour Quebec]

why did the US even both wasting money and more importantly lives

[2342]

Horrific New Torture Pictures Released

MORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11923.htm

[lord_casek]

Horrific New Torture Pictures Released

MORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11923.htm


wait until the child rape pics come out. just wait. there
will be some crazy shit going down...unless america has totally fallen asleep at the wheel.

[2342]

wait until the child rape pics come out. just wait. there
will be some crazy shit going down...unless america has totally fallen asleep at the wheel.

Yes, I have read about this- the child rape at Abu Ghraib - We can only hope that America does NOT ACT like it’s been somehow forcibly sucked back into a sealed horror-movie canister only to sit back with silent shamefulness and phlegmy evil- and do NOTHING but fanatize about their own foot fetish and walk around like a dazed alcoholic strolling through Oktoberfest- sort of like we did throughout the entire Bush Adminastration.

[lord_casek]

Yes, I have read about this- the child rape at Abu Ghraib - We can only hope that America does NOT ACT like it’s been somehow forcibly sucked back into a sealed horror-movie canister only to sit back with silent shamefulness and phlegmy evil- and do NOTHING but fanatize about their own foot fetish and walk around like a dazed alcoholic strolling through Oktoberfest- sort of like we did throughout the entire Bush Adminastration.


i like to think that way, as well. i hope and pray that we do not remain silent and in fear.

[2342]

KBR Knowingly Poisoned U.S. Soldiers in Iraq, Refuses to Admit Fault

http://cherryhill.injuryboard.com/workplace-injuries/kbr-knowingly-poisoned-us-soldiers-in-iraq-refuses-to-admit-fault.aspx?googleid=258762

[viperface]

Wonder what'll happen there now that the war has been won.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/interactive/2010/oct/23/wikileaks-iraq-deaths-map

[christo-f]

Place is already pulling itself apart.

Google Hashemi and al-IRaqiya.


The general result of the invasion of Iraq is that the US has handed Iraq to the Iranians. If the Alawite rule in Syria doesn't collapse Iran will own Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Have a look at a map and ask yourself what that means.

I don't have an opinion on whether the invasion was right or wrong but I do think that the stategic outcome is negative for US interests and their allies in the region.

[viperface]

Iraq PM already pocketed by Iran?
http://www.juancole.com/2011/12/iran-and-al-maliki-v-sunni-politicians.html

Let us not speculate supplying any islamist commie terrorists in the region.

[McLovin]

http://files.myopera.com/salventura/blog/iraq_oil_toon.jpg
is it really that simple?

[RIPS]

8 years of training before invading Iran

[billcosby]

the war in the middle east in general is fucked up, we've been at war in afghanistan longer than iraq and we're just going to be going to iran next. there's a lot of fucked up shit you don't see that soldiers do over seas. and the shit that gets leaked is just the retarded soldiers that don't know how to keep videos of them and their friends pissing on dead bodies off the internet.

[viperface]

Genetic damage and health in Fallujah Iraq worse than Hiroshima


http://ipsnews.net/fotos/107424-20120413.jpg
"HAHAHAHA"



"We recorded 672 cases in January but we know there were many more," says Hadidi. He projects pictures on
to a wall at his office: children born with no brain, no eyes, or with the intestines out of their body.

Facing a frozen image of a child born without limbs, Hadidi says parents’ feelings usually range
between shame and guilt. "They think it’s their fault, that there’s something wrong with them.
And it doesn’t help at all when some elder tells them it’s been ‘god’s punishment’."


article: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107424

the study: http://www.thecbdf.org/ar/cbdf-reaserch-papers/61-international-journal-of-environmental-studies-and-public-health-ijerph-switzerland-genetic-damage-and-health-in-fallujah-iraq-worse-than-hiroshima-

[Walid Jumblat]

Plllllllllllllllllllllllease don't tell me they're claiming radiation poisoning against because of depleted uranium again.

I don't recall too much need for anti-armor in Fallujah. I also don't recall these kinds of circumstances appearing in other combat zones where DU has been used extensively.

It's probably just god punishing them for something they've done. They should be ashamed of themselves.

[viperface]

Yeah,

[Fist 666]

AP rounds were used all over, def fallujah, but worse than hiroshima because of it?
no dice. they had mutant fish in their rivers long before oif.

[viperface]

I suppose you read the text and think they lie, so yes it could be all bullshit swiss propaganda.
But in case you didn't read it, the study clearly reports of increase during the recent occupation.
And they don't claim they know it's exactly DU that causes it. Could be the fucking wooly pete or whatever

"Results of a survey in Jan/Feb 2010 of 711 houses and more than 4000 individuals in Fallujah show that
in the five years following the 2004 attacks by USA-led forces there has been a 4-fold increase in all cancer."

[Fist 666]

I did read.
I also question how accurate the reports before 2004 were? I know US invasion drastically increased medical presence and as such the reports and tracking of such.

i'm not saying willy p* (white phosphorous) or DU doesn't cause cancer (i know enough oif vets with weird issues to know better) but this seems questionable at best.

but i'm not a scientist or a doctor, just a soldier and a cynic so who knows.

[Walid Jumblat]

Could be a mountain of things, including industrial elements that were spread because of the fighting, not so much by the fighting.

There is a lot of scientific evidence to say that DU is very unlikely to cause cancer, etc. That's not to say that there aren't other things that could cause issues. As Fist said as well, studies previous to 2003/04 are not going to have the rigor one would want for a comparative analysis.

[viperface]

Yes the sensationalist, intentional overtones in the headline are obvious. Also they say locals are ashamed
and that real numbers are bigger, they probably come out and file reports much more now
than before occupation? Sounds plausible, but it's still speculation.

Iraq wasn't as stone age as Afghanistan or nearly as isolated from rest of the world as North Korea.
I wouldn't claim they didn't have proper records about Infant death rate before the war. It's fairly
normal and easy task for any national government. And whatever it is, there's no such increase in
defects, infant deaths etc. in other areas included in the research.

Keep in mind that the actual study doesn't exactly claim it's uranium or capitalism that
caused this. They just report an anomaly that you want to downplay because it might make
the Coalition look bad. Who knows, perhaps Saddam hid the wmd's in Fallujah drinking water.
Maybe the Italians dumped their nuclear waste in there. Find out!

"To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004
when the attacks happened. We need urgently to find out what the agent was. Although many suspect
Uranium, we cannot be certain without further research and
independent analysis of samples from the area."

I think it should bee investigated: If you go to these places and something like this
pops up, and you caused it, it's fucked up and bullshit. Find a scapegoat.
If you did not cause it: still bs but conclusion is opposite: you should go spread freedom
much more, who knows what the fuck is going on in Syria or Luxembourg.
Without investigation everyone will sure as hell blame – not the coalition – but United States.
As an evil, collective hive-mind against babies.

On a lighter note, perhaps this really means that conventional nuclear weapons are much healthier than DU rounds.